Those of you who did not have a topic to present for your seminars in First Year American Literature (1DDDA-1DDEA) can work on: Observations from the back of the line (please see below) by Garrison Keillor.
Garrison Keillor 1942
Garrison Keillor, author and host of "A Prairie Home Companion" was born in 1942 in Anoka, Minnesota. He began his radio career as a student at the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated.
In 1969 he began writing for The New Yorker. It was writing an article about the Grand Ole Opry in 1974 that inspired him to create a live variety show for radio. Thus "A Prairie Home Companion" was born on July 6, 1974 in a St. Paul college theatre in front of an audience of 12 people.
In 1987, he ended A Prairie Home Companion and moved to New York where, in 1989, he started a new program, "The American Radio Company", which played to sold-out houses for four seasons. The show returned to the name "A Prairie Home Companion" in 1993 and is once again based in Minnesota. The decision to resume broadcasting under this widely recognized name has reconnected "A Prairie Home Companion" to its midwestern roots.
Garrison Keillor is the author of eight books for adults, and three for children. In addition to his books, he has written poetry and is a consummate story-teller whose voice can be heard on numerous recordings. He is married to violinist, Jenny Lind Nilsson, with whom he has a daughter.
One more spring in Minnesota,
To come upon Lake Wobegon.
Old town I smell your coffee.
If I could see you one more time --
I can't stay, you know, I left so long ago,
I'm just a stranger with memories of people I knew here.
We stand around, looking at the ground.
You're the stories I've told for years and years.
That yard, the tree -- you climbed it once with me,
And we talked of cities that we'd live in someday.
I left, old friend, and now I'm back again,
Please say you missed me since I went away.
One more time that dance together,
Just you and I now, don't be shy.
This time I know I'd hear the music
If I could hold you one more time.
Observations from the back of the line
Friday, April 11, 2008
For some people, the urge to compete is very, very strong, such as the tall red-haired woman last Sunday morning at LaGuardia Airport in New York who cut in front of me at the boarding gate and did it so smoothly, expertly, no body contact, you have to assume she's been acing people out all her life.
She was standing behind me and then alongside and then, although I was moving forward behind the old lady in front of me, Red Riding Hood planted her right foot in front of my left foot and leaned over and handed her ticket to the gate agent and without a murmur of apology or explanation, she slipped into the jetway.
Pure competitive urge, for no prize at all, as you see every day on the freeway at rush hour, the salmon leaping, cutting each other off, to get back home three minutes earlier than if they'd gone with the flow.
A few years ago I would have felt like pulling her hair out by the roots and spitting on her shoes and saying a few words about the importance of civility, but I am over that now.
I don't care if you step on my blue suede shoes, just don't steal my laptop and don't hurt my baby. I'm not the judge of other people's manners. I come from quiet mannerly Midwestern people and evidently she was raised in a home in which you had to elbow your way to the feed trough. Not her fault, just as what manners I have are to my mother's credit and not mine.
Back where I'm from, it's considered boorish to thrust yourself forward ahead of those who've been waiting longer. We are brought up to defer, an After You Alphonse reflex, and wave others to go first at the intersection, and sometimes we use deference aggressively, as a way of encouraging fools to walk out on thin ice and fall in, so we can enjoy seeing them flounder and then perhaps rescue them.
And so committee meetings in the Midwest can be torturous: The knowledgeable sit back and listen to some clueless gasbag blow for awhile and the main questions are never addressed and eventually the meeting grinds to a halt and some poor soul is left to do the hard work on her own and the gasbag goes on to his next triumph.
The daughter of a friend is 15 and full of the competitive urge, anxious to start driver's ed and get on with her life, miffed about the twerp who beat her out for class president, horrified by a rash of pimples, worried that she is ugly and that her Wal-Mart clothes are not cool enough and where will she go to college and why doesn't her boyfriend call her. The other night at supper, she asked, "Is fellatio considered a normal sexual practice?" and her poor father almost coughed up a hairball.
It's an agonizing time when you feel your peers edging ahead and the cool people aren't seeking you out and almost every day somebody announces a cool new job, or a big romance, or the receipt of an awesome gift, some fresh kill from the jungle, and it depresses you.
You don't want to be a loser. And you sense the fact that, in life, so much - so very much - is pure luck, no matter what they want you to think, and an angel may knock at your door in the person of a beggar, and you say No, and that No will resound for the rest of your born days. It is agonizing to think about.
I don't care about the red-haired woman: It's the 15-year-old who matters. Whatever happens, be observant, darling, and First Place is not a good observation point. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
There is grace afoot in the world and it will find you. You don't have to be first in line: It will be diligent in pursuing you and passing on its gifts, which are faith, hope, love and a sense of humor. The harder you strive for a gift, the more it eludes you, so let the lady step ahead of you. Keep your eyes open.
Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard on U.S. public radio stations. Distributed by Tribune Media Services.
From: Herald Tribune Published April 11, 2008
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