A Prairie Home Companion by Gloria Alden

As I’m writing this, I’m looking forward to my favorite time of the week coming in a few hours. That is listening to A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor on Saturday nights on NPR from 6:00 to 8:00. I’ve been listening to it since the early 1980s and hate the times I’m not home to hear it. Fortunately, it comes on again Sunday mornings, but unfortunately I only get part of it because most of it is when I’m in church.

What I enjoy is his sense of humor, the skits like Guy Noir, The Lives of the Cowboys, the Ketchup Advisory Board and, maybe the funniest of all is the phone conversations between Duane and his mother played by Sue Scott. And then, of course, there’s the news from Lake Wobegon, which always starts with “It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my home town, the town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve upon”- a fictional small town he has created, “where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Actually, he wrote a book Lake Wobegon Days, covering the whole history of this town with notations that if the reader didn’t know better, would have them believing it was a real place, even with an explanation why it doesn’t appear on maps.

Over the years I feel I know those characters like Florian and Myrtle Krebsbach, their daughter Eloise, Senator K. Thorvaldsen, Carl Krebsbach, a carpenter, his wife Marjorie, an English teacher, their daughter Eloise, who eventually became the mayor, brothers Carl and Clarence Bunsen, who co-own Bunsen Motors, the Ford Dealership, Dorothy of the Chatterbox Café, Ralph of Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocers, where if they don’t have what you want, you don’t need it, and Wally, owner of the Sidetrack Bar. Some of the earlier characters have moved on like Father Emil from Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, Sister Arvonne, and some of the pastors of the Lutheran Church like Pastor Liz, who really upset some of the congregation to have a female pastor, especially when she started dating. I haven’t heard of Mr. Berge in some time, either, or Senator K. Thorvaldsen, and we rarely hear of Bertha’s Kitty Boutique anymore.  

Fred Newman, Tim Russel, Sue Scott & Garrison

The Royal Academy of Radio Actors play different parts. They are Tim Russel, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, who is also the excellent sound effect guy. Then there’s Rich Dworsky, the pianist and music director, who directs the small band usually joined by any guest musicians on the show.

 

There are always musicians, some who appear on the show often, and others who are new to the show – an eclectic assortment of musicians from bluegrass groups, opera singers, country, folk, blues, and sometimes bands, like a college or a high school band and sometimes a military band. Garrison Keillor also sings. Sometimes it’s a solo, and sometimes in harmony with one of his guests and almost always at least one song with funny lines he’s written to replace those of familiar tunes.

He travels around the country with his show, although most of the time it’s either in his home town of Saint Paul, or in New York City where he spends part of the winter, especially around Christmas. When he’s in NYC, his guests are often Broadway singers and actors. 

I’ve been to three of his performances; one was years ago in Akron, Ohio, and two at the Blossom Music Center near Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. At Blossom Music Center, there’s a pavilion, and the seats in there are more expensive. For the less expensive seats, people bring lawn chairs, and often food, and sit on a hillside to watch the show. My first time at Blossom, I took my sister, a niece and a nephew, all three also fans of the show. Several years later I took my best friend, who didn’t listen to Prairie Home Companion, but was always game to go wherever I suggested. Just as the show was beginning, it started to rain, and all the people in the back of the pavilion turned around and watched us. I couldn’t understand why they were looking at us poor souls getting wet instead of keeping their eyes on Garrison Keillor who was doing his monologue about Cuyahoga Falls. When I commented on it, someone near me said he’d just walked by in the audience getting wet while talking on his microphone. Eventually, when it started thundering with flashes of lightning, we all raced to the pavilion where we got seats out of the rain.

When I went to the Prairie Home Companion to check the spelling for several of the actors, I found out he’s coming to Cleveland on November 14^th. I wish I had someone else who is a Prairie Home Companion fan to go with me. To read about the show go to prairiehome.org/

His bio from the back of his books reads: Garrison Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in1966 as an English major. He has been broadcasting since 1960, most of the time with Minnesota Public Radio. In 1974 he began A Prairie Home Companion, which is heard around the country on National Public Radio.  His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Los Angeles Times and other places. His daily “Writer’s Almanac” has been on the air since 1993. I get it at 6:45 a.m. and then again at 8:45 a.m. On the ten minute segment, he tells what writers or poets were born this day, as well as some other famous people, or events that happened. He finishes with a poem by a different poet each day. Keillor has also published many books. I own six of them; Lake Wobegon Days, Leaving Home; A collection of Lake Wobegon stories, Happy to be Here; Stories and comic pieces, We Are Still Married, A Christmas Blizzard, Pilgrims; a Lake Wobegon Romance, and Radio Romance, Liberty,Pontoon, and various collections of poetry he has put together and edited of well-known poets. Chicago Tribune compared his stories and books as “tributary streams running from Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson to the Wobegonian river of stories and novels that has issued from Garrison Keillor for years.” That the man is a creative genius is my opinion of him. There have been rumors of his retirement, and he may be close to it, but I for one hope he goes on for many more years. Of course, if he does retire, all his shows will still be available online in the archives.

 

The lines he ends the Writers Almanac with

Have you ever listened to A Prairie Home Companion or listened to The Writers Almanac?

If you have, what do you like about it?

And Still I Rise

The world lost a great woman last week on May 28^th when Maya Angelou died in her home in Winston-Salem, N.C. She was considered one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. She had so many roles in her life; celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress historian, filmmaker and civil rights activist.  She was also a singer and dancer and toured Europe in the opera Porgy and Bess. A great student of leadership and the creative process, she knew it took courage to lead and had close contact with some of the most well-known world leaders of her times. She said about leadership: “A leader sees greatness in other people. He nor she can be much of a leader if all she sees is herself.”

Trisha LaNae’ asked her “How does one serve in that capacity without serving into their own ego when one has acquired your level of success?”

Maya Angelou answered: “I realized that I didn’t get here by myself. I am a child of God and that’s a blessing and because I have the blessing of God and the knowledge, I have no modesty because it is a learned adaptation. People are just fooling themselves in trying to fool other people when they say, Oh me! I’m modest. I can’t do this. I have no modesty. I have humility. Humility comes from inside out and it says, someone was here before me and someone has already paid for me. I have a responsibility to pay for someone else who is yet to come; there is no room in there for ego! I am grateful to God. I am grateful to all my people who have helped me and all the ways they’ve helped me, the teachers, preachers, rabbis and priests. Everyone that has helped me. I am grateful, and I try to help someone else often as I can.”

Years ago I read her first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was a moving and beautiful book. She also wrote Gather Together in My Name, Swingin’ and Singin’ and Getting’ Merry Like Christmas, and The Heart of a Woman, plus more than thirty books of poetry.

Her early life was not easy. Abused as a child, she didn’t speak for five years. But in spite of this and the racial and often brutal experiences she was exposed to in St. Louis, Missouri and Stamps Arkansas, she still maintained an unshakable faith and the values of Traditional African-American family, community and culture.

Her list of accomplishments could and have filled books. She was a brilliant woman who mastered French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. She was the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, received three Grammy awards, and composed a poem that she read at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993.  Dr. Angelou received over 50 honorary degrees and was a Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.

I went to Google to learn more about this amazing woman and while there I watched videos of her reciting poems and being interviewed. What a powerful and delightful woman, and what a wise and brave woman she was. Following are some of her quotes:

On Courage: “One isn’t born with courage. One develops it. And you develop it by doing small, courageous things, in the same way that one wouldn’t set out to pick up a 100 pound bag of rice. If that was one’s aim, the person would be advised to pick up a five pound bag, and then a ten pound, and then a 20 pound, and so forth, until one builds up enough muscle to actually pick up 100 pounds. And that’s the same way with courage. You develop courage by doing courageous things, small things, but things that cost you some exertion – mental and, I suppose, spiritual exertion.”

On dealing with writer’s block: There are times when I sit at that bed, on that bed, with Roget’s Thesaurus, the dictionary, and the Bible, and a playing deck of cards. I play solitaire. And sometime in a month of writing, I might use up two or three decks of bicycle cars. Giving my “little mind” something to do. I got that from my grandmother, who used to say when something would come up, and it would surprise her, she’d say sister, you know, that wasn’t even on my littlest mind. So I really thought that there was a small mind and a large mind.”

On knowing when her work is done: “I know when it’s the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it’s the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‘No, No, I’m finished. Bye.’ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.”

On standing by one’s principles:  “I have a certain way of being in this world, and I shall not, I shall not be moved.”

I wish is could write more and add more pictures plus more of her wise sayings, but there’s a limit and I’ve reached it. However, I hope that most of you go to Google and read all you can about her, and even morel, I hope you bring up the videos and listen to her recite her poetry – especially the one that’s the title of this blog. In my opinion, no one can recite poetry better that she can.

Are you familiar with Maya Angelou and her works?

What do you admire most about her?

Remembering a Great Poet

                                                                                   
On January 29^th of this year it was the 50^th anniversary of Robert Frost’s death. America’s favorite poet died several months before his 89^th birthday. Two years before Frost’s death, John F. Kennedy requested this poet he greatly admired to read one of his poems at his Inauguration. Thus Robert Frost became the first inaugural poet of many to follow including Richard Blanco for Obama’s Inauguration this year. It was a cold, blustery January day when Frost tried to read the introduction he’d written to precede his poem, but he had trouble seeing the words from the glare of the sun and holding on to the papers in the wind. After putting them aside, his voice gained assurance as he recited a poem he’d written two days before Pearl Harbor, “The Gift Outright.” He made one change to the original poem in the last line. Instead of “such as she would become” he changed it to “such as she will become” referring to our land.

Frost is considered a master-poet because his poems worked, not only in cadence but in word choice. He didn’t plan his poems in advance, but believed those that came about unexpectedly in what he termed “a state of grace” were those poems that would succeed.  Another aspect that made him a master-poet to my mind is he wrote poems from personal experience and with a seeming simplicity appealing even to those who don’t regularly read poetry. Many of his poems tell a story like “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” or “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” – one of his most popular poems and one of his favorites, too.

When I was taking a poetry class as an undergraduate, we were asked to bring in a poem by our favorite author to share with the class and pass out copies of it, too. What a difficult assignment. I had more than one poet I liked, but decided Robert Frost would be at the top of the list.  What poem should I choose out of his hundreds and hundreds of poems? Not something everyone there had heard of.  Robert Frost had been a chicken farmer in his younger years. I had a flock of chickens, too. So I chose “A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury” which turned out to also be one of Robert Frost’s sixteen favorite poems.

On the day I was to read my selected poem, I plucked a Polish hen – one with a feathered topknot – and put her in a cloth book bag and covered her lightly with a towel. For those of you not familiar with chickens and most birds, if you cover them up and make it dark, they become very quiet and subdued.  I sat in an outside row and put the bag with hen on the floor beside me. She stayed quiet and only moved slightly once in a while. When my turn came, I took my hen out and went to the front of the room and placed her on the floor and then handed my copies of the poem  to the other students. Meanwhile, my hen did what any fowl would do in a new environment; she fouled the floor and clucked as she strutted about looking things over. I’d like to say everyone appreciated my reading of this excellent poem, but the truth is they were all laughing so hard (including Professor Hubler) that I don’t think anyone heard a word I said.

A little footnote to this story, another professor, Mary Turzillo, a wonderful poet, came in shortly after I finished reading my Frost poem with several of her poems to share. I don’t remember their titles, but one was a poem about the death of a rooster. This was, of course, a perfect ending to the class that day.

Robert Frost’s accomplishments in his life were many. He published eleven books of poetry, received numerous awards including a Pulitzer. He taught at several colleges including Amherst, University of Michigan, Harvard and Dartmouth. He also went on several good will missions for the U.S. Department of State to England, Ireland and Russia and left behind a wealth of other writings and letters in addition to his much loved poetry.

Who is your favorite poet and what about their poetry appeals to you?