![]() ![]() Garrison Keillor's newest book, CHEERFULNESS, now available. I hear that Ahab dies and Ishmael survives to tell the tale. I’m in the deletion business: I’ve eliminated running, TV (except for baseball), and I gave away my unread Moby-Dick. Life itself is a privilege: look around you and be grateful for the trees, the grass, Lincoln, Twain, even the snow falling in the painting, and thanks to the good people who took it off my hands. My people invaded from Yorkshire and Wales, and we’ve done well here, thanks to good teachers and our elders who taught us gratitude. I’m an English major, an education that prepared me for a career in valet parking, but instead I go around and allow the curious to see a grateful old man. And your sins diminish: your greed is satisfied at any ATM, your lust is for more sleep, your gluttony is for a Dairy Queen Blizzard, your sloth becomes meditation. Past 70 there is a tremendous diminishment of B.S. I don’t do costume changes in my show, I just stroll out on stage and sing a prayer and sing about fading daffodils and the brevity of summer and “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long” and the crowd and I sing “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,” which they probably haven’t sung since the sixth grade, and we do the one about deer and antelope, and maybe the Doxology, and while Taylor gives hope and affirmation to the anguished young, I assure the aging that they’re heading in the right direction. I admire my competitor Taylor Swift, a dedicated professional and a generous soul. Respect for the rival is taught to children in games you line up afterward and give a fist bump to the opponents who were in your face minutes before. It’s hard to imagine Bob Dole doing that to Bill Clinton. A former president’s website offered up the Obamas’ home address and a gentleman read it and announced that he was going to try to get “a shot” and the Secret Service arrested him near the home, carrying two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition. Politicians refer to an “invasion” of Hispanic migrants across the southern border and then a man, using the word “invasion,” killed 23 in a Walmart in El Paso. It’s a beautiful summer, the new valve in my heart is working, my wife is happy, I’m trucking around doing shows, and people tell me jokes: Ron DeSantis is struggling politically because he keeps having Disney spells. The young Democrats are nursing their resentments in behalf of the underprivileged, a noble though harmless exercise, and I am an old Democrat who allows himself to be grateful. Honors were bestowed on me in my professional life that might impress you but they were minor annoyances compared to the blessings of good teachers. To know at the age of 10 what you love is a privilege. Fern Moehlenbrock let me spend recess in the library. In fourth grade I was leery of playground bullies, and Mrs. I love to listen to him while I grade lessons.” It was remedial reading, of course, but she made me believe I’d been chosen for this privilege and she changed my life. Estelle Shaver kept me after school to read aloud to her and one day the janitor walked in and she said, “Listen to him, Bill. Now and then young progressive Democrats have said to me, when I expressed an opinion, “Well, you’re a privileged white male,” and of course they’re right. ![]() I keep the bust of Lincoln because it reminds me of my father. This impresses her and so she allows me to keep the stone busts of Mark Twain and Erato the Muse of lyrical poetry. ![]() The painting of the blizzard must go I bought it long ago because it reminded me of Minnesota mornings and walking to school, and now she informs me that it gives her the heebie-jeebies, and because I am in love with this woman I offer it up as a sacrifice. Clearing out an apartment a man sees what a work of art domestic life is, and clearance demands an iron will, no shilly-shallying, no regrets.
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