March 2023

Precompose Payment #3 of 70, sixty-eight to go!

Garrison Keillor, 1976

Dearest Sara, my sweet dead sister – 

I was thinking of Garrison Keillor, of the time when you took me to one of his early shows broadcasted locally from the lawn of the Science Museum in St. Paul, around the time of the photo above from the St Paul Pioneer Press. He opened a story with the caution that the story is a bit melancholy, “but I’m not afraid of that,” he said, which has stuck with me to this day. I was on my way, with my son, Chad, to Seattle from Boston, and I left Minnesota a fast fan, and not afraid.

Fast forward to the mid-eighties when we attended the Prairie Home Companion show, riding a cultural wave of popularity, splashing down for a performance in Seattle’s Paramount Theater, with the whole family in tow, even mom, Maxine.

After the show, we camped out in the bar of the hotel, listed as a sponsor in the program. Sure enough, He shows up with a few people, and You, standing, put out your hand, “Long time no see, Garrison,” you said, standing on both feet. (Sara was a volunteer of the show during its early years.)

I remember it, as if, it were a clip from a movie!

He shook your hand and mumbled, “You young people get a table,” referring to the group who entered with him.

Spilling over the edges of the small cocktail table was an issue of the Minneapolis Star — sent to you, Dear Sara — opened to a double page spread of his romance with a former high school student (an attractive woman pictured in the largest photograph) — a foreign exchange student from Copenhagen!

“So his desire to live life with at least some degree of normal anonymity was the main driver for his announcement. He had recently remarried, this time to a high school friend from Denmark who had been a foreign exchange student when they met at Anoka High School. They reconnected at a class reunion in 1985, married and bought a large home in the same St. Paul neighborhood where F. Scott Fitzgerald was raised.”

The history of his  Prairie Home Companion radio show was added to the National Registry of the Library of Congress in 2003. The account is extensive, a great read for solid fans like ourselves. The writer, Chuck Howell, skips over Keillor’s #metoo incident as: “events that won’t be described in this essay,” something we didn’t talk about either, but it resulted in Keillor’s immediate dismissal from Minnesota Public Radio, whose success was owed, in a large part, to the national popularity of his weekly News from Lake Wobegon.

So. “What’s happened to Garrison?”

I know, Dear Sara, gosh, we were such fans back then. The answer fell into my laptop one morning that he is writing on Substack! This letter to you is on Substack … imagine that! “Garrison Keillor and Friends” is on Substack, which promotes itself as the home for great writing.

“I don’t need another career, but once a writer, always a writer, and I’ve been busy during the pandemic. I wrote a novel and a memoir and then another novel and now I’m working on two more. When you lead a monastic life to avoid viral infection, there is plenty of available time,” Keillor writes on the About page.

Sherman Alexie, a Pacific Northwest favourite son, also has a Substack newsletter which features his poetry that I enjoy quite a bit. I was introduced to this online “publishing-platform'“ by my wife, when Karen (yes, we did it, on April Fool’s Day 2019!)  recommended “Letters from an American,” a daily email letter from Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College. She is a Substack Super Star with thousands and thousands of subscribers.

Publishing “Tai Chi and Me” on Substack is free with the intention that one day I will add paid subscriptions and Substack will take a cut. I am thinking of offering tai chi lessons with videos, but would anyone want to pay for them? For now, I am happy with words, and being a part of this online writers community, and especially fired up about this new adventure, Letters to Sara, a 70 Month Writers Prompt — where you are now — Letter #3.

Welcome to sister, Nan, who subscribed to receive a monthly Letter to Sara; and to Donna, saint-in-training Donna for her death care of you and Maxine and now helping with brother Pete’s diabetes situation. And to Rosemary, a family friend for so many years; and to Karen, who was once the Mayor of Snohomish and now, is affectionally referred to as the Bag Lady! Welcome to all.

If you are new to this letter, please consider inviting yourself to join us reading monthly Letters to Sara; and, if you enjoyed reading this letter, pump the heart red and share with a friend. Thanks ~w.