Post from the Host

We have been getting some questions about life in Lake Wobegon under social distancing. Here, Garrison answers a few from Tony & Toni in South Rockwood, Michigan.

What we talked about at dinner Monday

Days of social isolation have told us things about ourselves that we don’t want to know. Instead of using the time to read Tolstoy or listen to Beethoven, we watched a video of a cat sitting on a whoopee cushion.

It’s an extraordinary moment in history when the American family is brought together by the threat of contagion and I, the eldest of my family, sit in the chimney corner and wait for my offspring to say, “Tell us about your life when you were young, Papa,” in which case I’d tell about Uncle Jim’s farm and his horses Prince and Ned and the haymow and the cistern where we lowered the milk cans to cool, but nobody asks, which is okay by me. In the 21st century, a city boy’s experiences on a farm in 1946 are not so riveting and it hurts to tell a story and see your audience look around for a route of escape.

The need to replace bad tenants with better

A day of spring appeared out of nowhere Monday, trees blooming in the park, a troop of tiny kiddos roped together with teachers fore and aft, sociable dogs, and yellow daffodils in bloom, though I’m not a botanist, and maybe they were begonias but to me they’re daffodils because begonias sound like pneumonia and so Wordsworth and Herrick wrote poems about daffodils. Let’s just assume that’s true.

The only column you need to read about COVID-19

The beauty of COVID-19 is how shiny clean everybody looks since the panic set in. I’m in New York City this week and the stores are completely sold out of hand sanitizer, Hi-Lex, alcohol, antibacterial wipes, every kind of cleaner, and when you get on the subway at rush hour and stand within six inches of four different people, they smell nice, like a doctor’s office. They try not to talk or even exhale. They avoid eye contact lest the virus be spread visually. Some people wear face masks, which are useful for preventing them from picking their noses, which, once you’ve touched a deadly railing, could implant the virus in your body and in a week or two you’d be in a TB sanitarium on a desert island, tended by nurses in hazmat suits. If someone on the train coughs, everyone disembarks at the next stop and wipes their face and, as an extra precaution, swigs a little mouthwash or maybe vodka. Eighty-proof vodka is a proven sanitizer. The incidence of COVID-19 among bums at the Union Gospel Mission is extremely low. Gin does not work as well, so ad agency execs are surely at risk. As for Corona beer, sales are way down because, as your mother probably said, You Never Know.

In one word, what America desperately needs

America desperately needs a woman president. I thought that in church Sunday as we sang, “Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you,” a gorgeous hymn with a chorus of Alleluias, and the altos around me sounded like my old aunts, and the teenage acolytes, both girls, stood up so straight and solemn, holding candles, as a woman priest read the Gospel.

Sitting in a boat on the Niagara River

I was brought up by evangelicals so I can understand the fervent campaign to elect a revolutionary socialist to the White House. My people believed that we alone knew the mind of God and that He loved us more than the ignorant pagans around us. So when I see the old revolutionary shake his fists and shout against injustice, I relive the righteousness of my childhood. Happy times. I haven’t felt half so superior since.

It’s more satisfying to be part of a militant righteous minority than to be in the anxiety-ridden confused majority — to be a nightrider rather than a passenger in the long wagon train. The problem with righteousness is that it isolates you from those who are less righteous, which is okay if you’re self-sufficient and living in the woods but if you depend on others, you need to cut corners. When I was 20, I looked down on people who hadn’t read the right books, but then one day you need to call a plumber and your world starts to broaden.

An old man’s Sunday morning annotated

“Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” said the prophet Isaiah, which we read in church on Sunday, but nobody shouted. We are flatlanders, brought up to be still and behave ourselves and listen to instructions, but if the instruction is to shout out and raise your voice, wait to see if other people do it and then, depending on which ones do, maybe do it yourself but quietly. And we are Episcopalian so what would we shout? A poem by Mary Oliver? A recipe for bouillabaisse?

The light bulb is out and needs changing

I flew into New York last week, descending over the East River onto LaGuardia, and outside Baggage Claim I was surprised to find men and women in official yellow vests guiding us tourists toward the taxi stand, helping with luggage, saying, “Welcome to New York” and “Thanks for using LaGuardia” and “Enjoy the city.” This is not the New York that we Minnesotans expect to find, but thank goodness the cabdrivers are still genuine New York cabdrivers, surly, scrappy, contemptuous of the stupidity all around them.

What goes on in Minneapolis on a winter night

I drove to the grocery the other night and there, near checkout, saw a freezer case with the sign, “Artisan Ice Cubes,” a bold new step in our march toward Preposterosity. I asked the checkout guy if maybe the sign meant to say “Artesian” and he wasn’t interested. Word usage is not his responsibility. To me, artisanal ice is in the same category as organic non-GMO ice cubes. I’m a Minnesotan and I appreciate the beauty of frost and snow but an ice cube is an ice cube.

Some New York thoughts on solitude

I stood around looking at J.D. Salinger stuff last Friday, his old black Royal typewriter, family snapshots, and typewritten letters, at the New York Public Library, and it was a wonder to see. I’m one of the many millions for whom The Catcher in the Rye was an important book back in my teens and back then, Salinger was famous for guarding his privacy. He didn’t do interviews, was never on TV, and so was portrayed in the press as a crank, an anti-social weirdo. It’s clear from the exhibit that he was not.