Letters to the Editor
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I hope you're back
And enjoying the freakishly warm 40 degree weather. Minnesota's not so bad. It helps you appreciate anything that's warmer than 15.
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Something Wonderful Just Happened...
Garrison Keillor actually made me laugh! What a wonderful piece!... straight and honest and unencumbered by too much cleverness.
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Funny, I was thinking just the opposite
A little too clever, a little too funky. Halcyon? Miasma?
Besides, feeling like 30 isn't at all like being 30, like.
And he admitted subliminally that even that didn't give him satisfaction, because he was surrounded by all the 20-somethings.
He's had his life. It's too late to get a new one, or I would tell him to.
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Garry, darling
Garry,
You are old and you are from Minnesota! As a long-time resident of Minnesota and now a Californian, I just have to tell you to lighten up, for heaven's sake. It's not the young people of Montessori school, it is we, the parents. We WANT our children to share things with us.
I know you are a great guy; nobody could come up with the observations you do and have an unloving heart, but sometimes you just take yourself too seriously. Yeh, sure, you betcha! You'd be good at half the price.
Man, I miss Minnesota. But I love California,
CJ Foster
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You old softie, You
If you're going to San Francisco...be sure to pack me in your suitcase. It's 40 degrees (celsius not farenheit)here in Adelaide; it's been hot, dusty, sweltering hot like this for nine days straight and likely to continue frying us to a crisp for another week. Garrison...I'll take your miserable morgue-like freezing temperatures over burning in hell any old day. Care to swap?
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In tha 415
Yo, G:
Right on, bro. Don't sweat the stefan nonsense dis. You copped the City vibe f'reals, dawg.
Next time tho, Lower Haight, Outer Mission, Glen Park. Get out some.
Peace.
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Where we lived, once, near Irving St., coffee houses, and Jason Keillor's booger jokes
I live in L.A. now, by default. I used to live in SF and Berkeley. I lived in San Francisco decades ago, between Irving and Judah, on 7th Ave. Where we lived in a very ramshackle Victorian owned by a Presbyterian church down on the corner where my husband was a week-end janitor which paid for the house, a job gotten for him by his friend who was Assistant Minister. (He hated it.) I loved having a two-story house, near Golden Gate Park. We lived there with our baby until we moved and our marriage unraveled due to his affair which he didn't admit to for decades after we separated.
There are several out-of-the way coffee houses in The City, and i used to go there, 'out on the avenues', near the ocean, where no one would recognize me (a very private Berkeley psychotherapist), but way before anybody had laptops or email or any way to communicate with someone who was not there; no, I remember a young woman having a loud conversation on a cell phone while I was trying to write -- not as interesting as the one to the mom). Still, no laptops.
Our Victorian turned into a house for runaway teenagers after we left it -- 'Huckleberry House'. Then it was torn down and two-story apartments moved in there.
Thanks for a very wonderful story; I have already emailed it to my daughter, the afore-mentioned baby.
Incidentally, I loved the re-runs of your shows, sheparded by Jason Keillor et al., during the last pledge drive two weeks ago, esp. the one which uses all the booger jokes possible. This, after I had asked you specifically not to use booger jokes any more ('I love all your shows, and Writer's Almanac, but...' You must have seen it.). I laughed and laughed very hard. Thank you to Jason...et al.
Thanks again.
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It's depressing both ways.
I don't like the thought of you (Garrison) getting old, or the cold in Minnesota, or things that used to be in SF (or any place) but aren't anymore.
But I also don't like the laptop generation, which is my generation, which is--can I say it?--excruciatingly alienating. If there is a big difference between the old days of being private about your book writing or hangovers, and the solitude of never having a conversation that's longer than 5 minutes anymore (with anyone other than a co-dependent mother), then I'd love for someone to tell me what it is.
I am exhausted by laptops, text messaging, IMs, earbuds, and pseudo-sharing w/ my mother. I just want a real, meaningful, face-to-face conversation with a Garrison-type person.
Methinks this is impossible. Back to my laptop.
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Apparently
everyone in that coffee shop was so connected, they didn't recognize the old hilarious fart Garrison Keillor sitting next to them.
Loved the bit about the autohyperpsychoanalyzing son to his mom.
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Congratulations . . .
. . . on writing from the perspective of an old guy without just recalling "the good old days." A few of my friends have written or are writing books in the general category of "Old Guy Fondly Remembers Vastly Simpler and Superior Good Old Days," my least favorite literary form. Yours was and often is "Old Guy Fondly Observes Current Day Charms" -- Thanks, I like it!
PS "Old Guy Fondly Remembers etc. etc." works fine on The News From Lake Wobegon, rooted as it is in the eternal Minnesota present.
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Ahhh..
Having lived in SF before the days when you needed half of a two job income just to pay the rent, it was wondeful to read your observations, Mr K. If St Francis of Assisi were to be reincarnated (and who's to say he isn't) he no doubt would be trying to connect with the City (see, I capitalized C in city so you know). My friends still beckon me back as much as the weather, but I wonder if they'd be there themselves without it. Fairweather friends? In a city where the residents complain if it gets to warm to wear leather, I just don't know, but to smash n grab a phrase from W.C.Fields, I'd rather be there than here in Atlanta.
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Bravo
Excellent writing, hilarious, brilliantly observed and made to look as if it was written "easy like" without suffering--though of course it wasn't.
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Spring in SF
I drove from the Richmond District into the city every morning for a few years, usually verrrrry-slowly through Golden Gate Park - and what a daily ride. The dogwoods - I believe those are the smallish trees with white flowers, though I am not good at naming my trees - the dogwoods bloom in January, and that announces spring, at least as far as I'm concerned. Of course, it's still rainy and damp that time of year (though not as cold as July). But to have trees flowering just after the start of the new year is a very uplifting thing.
San Francisco is a remarkably beautiful place, despite the best efforts of those trying to wring every last penny out of it. But too much time there (7 years in my case) makes you feel like you have bees in your head; too much caffeine and technology, BMWs and self-absorbed yuppies; rasta-hatted hipsters and past-their-prime hippies, people with histories you would never imagine.
I was wide-eyed with wonder for my entire time there. But the city tries to expel those with insufficient incomes (under $100,00/yr, give or take), like the body tries to rid itself of a virus. Eventually it succeeded, and here I am, back in rural Pennsylvania, with lots of stories to tell those who have the patience to listen to them.
Glad to have had the experience.