It’s Spring! It’s Spring!

That merry month of May!
by Charlie Leck

I think spring will finally arrive today. It’s been pretty hellish here – one day in the seventies to tease us and then four in the low forties and lower, with snow and slush, to remind us we are from Minnesota and not Georgia. However, today it arrives. It will be lovely and sunny and mildly warm. Nothing like spring! Then, in a few days, summer will arrive with its humidity and mosquitoes and we’ll await the splendor of autumn. There is nothing quite like living in Minnesota. Nothing!

It’s a short blog today, but I’m about to turn to the Sunday papers. I want to finish them early so I can get out and enjoy spring and swing the golf clubs a little. Then, children are coming for dinner tonight and they’ve asked me to do a Mark Bittman dinner. I’ll sauté some shrimp and scallops with a nice flavoring of fermented Asian black beans in the oil. A nice, fresh salad and some good bread and that should do the trick.

The Old Scout, by Garrison Keillor, was enjoyable this morning. I went a couple of weeks without recommending him to you, so you should be ready for another quotation from today’s column.

“These were my fellow Minnesotans in line and we are docile in April, at the end of our long winter. On Sunday the 20th of April, temperatures were in the seventies and the crocuses were about to bloom, and then on Friday the 25th, a half-inch of snow fell. People didn't talk about it. There it was, plain as the nose on your face, but it was just too awful to discuss. It was like your old husband getting blitzed at your parents' 50th anniversary and trying to get everyone to sing "All You Need Is Love." It's like your child announcing that she's written a memoir called "Spirals of Shame." Don't talk about it. Move on. Change the channel. Talk about your tomato plants and your good children, the ones who do not write memoirs, who don't remember the terrible things you did to them, they just remember your birthday and when it comes time, they will pick out a wonderful nursing home for you. Breakfast is from 7 to 10 and they serve nice omelets and all the coffee you can drink.”

I’ll catch you up on the papers tomorrow! There are some good blogs out there, waiting for me to read them.

The Old Scout

Garrison Keillor's Sunday Column
by Charlie Leck

I guess they'll have to file a "cease and desist order" against me. Tribune Media Services distributes Garrison Keillor's weekly column and I end up quoting pretty large chunks of it for you, which is just a fraction as good as delighting in the whole thing.

You know, until last July, when Keillor's column began appearing every Sunday morning, I use to dive into the sports section just as soon as the local paper was dropped on the porch, and turn to the column of one of our local jock nuts, Sid Hartman. These days, I go first for the opinion section and right to the Old Scout column. I am very rarely disappointed; for example, a few weeks ago the column didn't appear and that disappointed the hell out of me. Keillor's stuff is just plain good.

Let me quote for you the opening of this week's column and its concluding two paragraphs. In between there's a lot of good stuff that explains the grammatical error in the last sentence. Click here to read the entire column on-line. If you're smart, you'll bookmark this so you can go to it every week for these delights.

"Here we are, ignorant peasants in our mud huts at the base of the volcano of finance, begging the gods to spare us as the ground shakes beneath our feet and economists examine the entrails of pigeons and the shamans of the Federal Reserve fling handfuls of sacred powder into the steaming crater. We live with a system rejiggered by Republicans - freedom from regulation, but when the manure hits the ventilator, the Feds step in with a few hundred billion to rescue the players - and nobody can tell us ignorant savages how rough the upheaval might be. Nobody knows.

"... People accuse us liberals of permissiveness - no no no no no. We liberals are oppressive, not permissive, working day and night to take your guns away and make you apply for a permit every time you spit. In my heart, I belong to the Correctness Party, the party of good spellers, of people who pay attention to details. The Current Occupant is not one of us. He is not a man who puts pen to paper with any confidence. Intellectually he has been a charity case all his life. He is one of those men who are lucky that their fathers were born before they were. 

"I vote to send him up to talk to the volcano. Let him climb up to the crater in his loincloth and crouch in the billowing steam and tell the volcano to stop shaking and stay there until it does. Him and Greenspan could do it together."

They're calling for about 5 inches of snow up here today. Lake Wobegon will look wondrous in the snow. Have a good week.

END

He’s No Comedian

Garrison Keillor makes me laugh and cry – at the same time!
by Charlie Leck

He supposed to be a comedian. I think! Isn’t he? What is Garrison Keillor? The easy answer is that he is a brilliant artist. Both I and my wife love his Saturday evening show. Some immense peace comes over us when we listen to it. Turn off the TV and take the phone off the hook. Turn on the FM and increase the volume. Spread a heap of ketchup on a few slices of bread and let’s have a couple hours of delight and sanity. That’s the Prairie Home Companion Show – a Minnesota institution and one of the most successful entertainment enterprises on the face of the earth.

It took a “foreigner” to alert me to the wonder of the show. Decades ago a fellow in upper New York state – up near Rochester – told me he rarely missed sitting by the radio on a Saturday evening to listen to the Keillor’s old time radio show. I went home to Minnesota and made a habit of listening. It’s a highly anticipated part of each and every week.

Now Keillor is writing regularly in the Sunday morning opinion section of my local paper. For years my first move with the Sunday paper was toward the sports section. No longer! I turn now to the Opinion Exchange, to read Keillor’s weekly column. I probably like it because he so right down the line with what I think.

You want to know something? He makes more sense than Friedman, or Kristof, or Will, or Krugman… or any of the so called brilliant observers of current events. Keillor is a prophet and speaks with a tongue that stings and he occasionally shows his teeth, too. It tells America what it’s really like to be selfish and unfair and uncaring.

A few years ago I read Keillor’s little book, Homegrown Democrat. It was his attempt to explain what a Democrat is. It was a remarkable book – one of the finest I’ve ever read. It said lots of things the right-wing, evangelical portion of the Republican Party didn’t like (or wouldn’t like if they’d read the book).

This week, in his opinion column, Keillor wrote about Karl Rove, comparing him to the camp counselor who is always telling the campers how wonderful everything is out in the wild. Of course, every camper knew it was crappy and miserable, and what they really needed was a flush toilet and a hot shower. Rove kept trying to tell us how wonderful everything was in Iraq; and how many friends we really had around the world; and how good the economy was; and how great the American health care delivery system was; and how global warming is a farce. In his column, Keillor says goodbye to Rove and “good riddance” too.

Every nation needs a real prophet. Some thought Ralph Nader would play the role, but he just got whiny and self-righteous. Keillor is perfect. He’s got that sonorous voice (and you can even hear it in his writing) and piercing glare. He says what’s on his mind and he says it with extraordinary clarity. He points at evil and calls it what it is and doesn’t sugar-coat it in political vagueness.

If Keillor has a weakness it is that he’s too clever and too witty and a lot of those serious bastards with their pinched noses and pursed lips won’t get him. Garrison Keillor is as Minnesotan as they come. He believes in the possibility that no one has to be poor – that no one should be forgotten by society – that all people deserve high quality health care –and that going to war is the most serious decision a politician can make and that it should seldom be made.

Lake Wobegon, that curiously wonderful town just around the corner from here, has a strange affect on people. Karl Rove should have gotten to know the place and its people. Rove should have been raised on Powder Milk Biscuits and healthy doses of ketchup.