Garrison Keillor | The Eureka Reporter

Don’t go mum on us, Barack

Published: Jun 28 2008, 10:42 PM

By Garrison Keillor

I was at a playground with my daughter the other day, reading “The Two Kinds of Decay” by Sarah Manguso (good book) and watching my girl as she stood at the perimeter of children playing and studied them, exactly as I did when I was a kid, working up the nerve to plunge into the fray. She is braver than I — she plunges. I tended to retreat and have been backpedaling ever since.

Eulogy for the Winnebago

Published: Jun 21 2008, 11:09 PM

By Garrison Keillor

Eighty-six percent of the American people believe the price of gasoline will climb to five bucks a gallon this year, a big shift in public opinion from a year ago when most people felt that oil prices were spiking high and would soon return to normal — which is 35 cents a gallon, same as a pack of smokes — and we’d be able to head west in our Winnebagos for a nice summer vacation.

A Duke Ellington for modern times

Published: Jun 14 2008, 10:43 PM

By Garrison Keillor

Hot night, New York: a little breeze in the trees in the deep stone canyons as I look out my window, thousands of little lighted windows of private lives, one of which is mine. I’m reminded of this by the fact that a hundred feet away, a man stands at a window looking through binoculars that seem to be trained precisely on me, and though he surely would prefer looking at someone more exciting than a tall, bespectacled man in a black T-shirt and jeans, a man who is not jumping around playing air guitar or fastening his hair to his head with strips of tape or unzipping the dress of a beautiful woman, nonetheless he is focused on me, and I don’t leap back from the window in horror — I feel (slightly) honored by his attention.

Summer’s here: everybody in the pool

Published: Jun 7 2008, 10:50 PM

By Garrison Keillor

School is winding down and small children are staring out the windows at freedom and counting the days until the heavy hand of grammar and spelling will be lifted from their backs. My sandy-haired daughter dove into the pool on Memorial Day and has been amphibious ever since.

The roar of hollow patriotism

Published: May 31 2008, 10:56 PM

By Garrison Keillor

Three-hundred thousand bikers spent Memorial Day weekend roaring around Washington, D.C. in tribute to our war dead, and I stood on Constitution Avenue Sunday afternoon watching a river of them go by, waiting for a gap in the procession so I could cross over to the Mall and look at pictures. The street had been closed off for them and they motored on by, some flying the Stars and Stripes and the black MIA-POW flag, honking, revving their engines, an endless celebration of internal combustion.

A few mutterings over the graves of soldiers

Published: May 25 2008, 12:14 AM

By Garrison Keillor

The Current Occupant tossed Nazis into a speech last week, something he rarely does since it only reminds people of Dick Cheney. He likened those who would negotiate with terrorists to those who tried to appease the Nazis, an awkward comparison, since Nazis were self-defined and wore the swastika proudly, and terrorists are anybody we nominate to be terrorists, who may include terrorists, people who know terrorists, people named Terry, or people with wrists. One reason Guantanamo is kept top-secret is so you and I won’t know how many innocent people have been locked up there and how little the bureaucracy cares about innocence, which might remind people of the Nazis.

Nobody loves you like mama does

Published: May 10 2008, 11:38 PM · Updated: May 11 2008, 1:01 PM

By Garrison Keillor

The last time I witnessed a woman becoming a mother, it wasn’t anything like the frilly sentiments of Mother’s Day. She lay on her back, perspiring heavily and yelling, “Oh my God, why did you do this to me? I’ll never forgive you in a hundred years. I hope you hurt like this someday. Give me another epidural, you sadists. And get this thing out of me!” — and looking up at me as if she were burning at the stake and I had lit the fire. And when the infant appeared and was placed on the Madonna’s chest, she said: “What in the world am I supposed to do with that?”

Planes and Purgatory: a day at the airport

Published: May 3 2008, 10:27 PM

By Garrison Keillor

A cabdriver picked me up outside the Waffle House in Little Rock last Sunday and said so sweetly, “I hope you enjoyed your breakfast,” elongating the “joy” slightly and slurring the “k” in “breakfast.” I said yes, but honestly, I don’t really associate breakfast with enjoyment. It’s chow. It’s a standardized meal meant to fortify you for the day’s maneuvers. And you square your shoulders and sit down and eat it. This particular breakfast was grits, eggs over easy, country ham, and biscuits with gravy, a meal that will fuel you right through five o’clock, but enjoyment?

‘Theirs not to reason why’

Published: Apr 5 2008, 11:38 PM · Updated: Apr 6 2008, 12:22 AM

By Garrison Keillor

As our story continues, we find Sen. McCain resting in his tent, plotting his fall campaign, as the Democrats continue the longest primary in human history, which has left the pundit club and the blogoswamp with nothing new to say whatsoever. You might as well write about your sock drawer. Hillary Clinton is a great woman and a leaden campaigner who makes even loyal supporters want to crawl behind the couch, and Barack Obama has lost his charisma -- it wore off him like tread off a tire. I love him like a brother and my brothers have no charisma either.

Like it was great (totally)

Published: Mar 15 2008, 11:44 PM

By Garrison Keillor

It is unbearably bleak as winter lingers on in March and a cold wind blows and the people on the obituary page seem better looking than yourself and your prostate feels like a hockey puck and you walk around with your wallet and car keys looking for your wallet and car keys and you read an article about bipolar disorder and think, “Hey, that’s me.” So, in desperation, I flew out to San Francisco for a few days, where the winter rains had stopped and the city was bathed in Mediterranean light and everyone seemed very buoyant, as if the miasma was gone and the halcyon days were back, and suddenly I felt 30 again.

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