Garrison Keillor's newest book, CHEERFULNESS, now available.

Drawing on personal anecdotes from his young adulthood into his eighties, Keillor sheds light on the immense good that can come from a deliberate work ethic and a buoyant demeanor. “Adopting cheerfulness as a strategy does not mean closing your eyes to evil,” he tells us; “it means resisting our drift toward compulsive dread and despond.” Funny, poignant, thought-provoking, and whimsical, this is a book that will inspire you to choose cheerfulness in your daily life.

1. CHEERFULNESS

It’s a great American virtue, the essence of who we are when we’re cooking with gas: enthusiasm, high spirits, rise and shine, qwitcher bellyaching, wake up and die right, pick up your feet, step up to the plate and swing for the fences. Smile, dammit. Dance like you mean it and give it some pizzazz, clap on the backbeat. Do your best and forget the rest, da doo ron ron ron da doo ron ron. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, hang by your thumbs and write when you get work, whoopitiyiyo git along little cowboys—and I am an American, I don’t eat my cheeseburger in a croissant, don’t look for a church that serves a French wine and a sourdough wafer for Communion, don’t use words like dodgy, bonkers, knackered, or chuffed. When my team scores, I don’t shout, Très bien!! I don’t indulge in dread and dismay. Yes, I can make a list of evils and perils and injustices in the world, but I believe in a positive attitude and I know that one can do only so much and one should do that much and do it cheerfully. Dread is communicable: healthy rats fed fecal matter from depressed humans demonstrated depressive behavior, including anhedonia and anxiety—crap is bad for the brain. Nothing good comes from this. Despair is surrender. Put your shoulder to the wheel. And wash your hands.

We live in an Age of Gloom, or so I read, and some people blame electronics, but I love my cellphone and laptop, and others blame the decline of Protestantism, but I grew up fundamentalist so I don’t, and others blame bad food. Too much grease and when there’s a potluck supper, busy people tend to stop at Walmart or a SuperAmerica station and pick up a potato salad that was manufactured a month ago and shipped in tanker trucks and it’s depressing compared to Grandma’s, which she devoted an hour to making fresh from chopped celery, chives, green onions, homemade mayonnaise, mustard, dill, and paprika. You ate it and knew that Grandma cared about you. The great potato salad creators are passing from the scene, replaced by numbskulls so busy online they’re willing to bring garbage to the communal table.

I take no position on that, since I like a Big Mac as well as anybody and I’ve bought food in plastic containers from refrigerated units at gas stations and never looked at the expiration date. And I am a cheerful man...

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All I know is what she tells me

I get the news from my wife, who sits reading the paper across the breakfast table from me and tells me what I need to know, ignoring much of page 1 and picking out the story of the Italian Jews who were sheltered in Catholic monasteries in spite of an anti-Semitic pope and saved from the Holocaust and the story about Florida’s war on undocumented workers, which deprives Floridians of a ready workforce to help clean up the wretched mess after a hurricane and the pictures of beautiful colorful clothing worn by Sudanese women even during their cruel civil war.

It’s not a partisan newscast, it’s humanistic, it’s not about issues but about people, which makes me think she should run for president, which would be good for the country — Mexico is going to have a woman president, why should we lag behind — and I do believe her style is a winning one. My mother was a conservative but she loved Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt because she felt they cared about people. Joe Biden’s trip to Maui to commiserate with fire victims by reminiscing about the time he almost lost his Corvette as a result of a kitchen fire — dumb, dumb, dumb, Joe — why did Jill let you say that stupid clueless thing? A Corvette is not the equivalent of someone’s home, Joe. Who is briefing you for these appearances? Fire him.

I haven’t mentioned candidacy to Jenny because I know she’d say, “Get real. No way.” And also because I have no wish to be First Gentleman. I have a good career as an octogenarian stand-up and after forty years imprisoned in the blue taffeta skirt of public radio, I can finally go out on stage and speak my mind. I’m not about to give that up to become a smiling nonentity, a piece of furniture, which is what a political spouse needs to be.

I’m not willing to give up the luxury of free speech, not even for the good of the nation, and I do think a Jenny presidency could be just what the times demand. She’s never held office, which means she speaks clear English, no b.s. She comes from a very tight family and she values this highly. She has experienced poverty. She has seen mental illness up close. She has made a life in music, playing in orchestras, under the baton of all sorts of conductors, which enables her to read character and distinguish true leaders from egotists. Sitting in the string section, she knows the difference between “painful,” “passable,” and “passionate and profound.” Music is a public service and like other public services, health care, education, law enforcement, legislation, it has the power to change people’s lives for the good. This is the purpose of it and it has little to do with charisma, PR, and the conventional wisdom, and the murmurs of the media.

But this horse is not going to run, so that’s that. So rather than accompany my wife on the campaign trail, standing just behind her and to the left, maintaining appropriate facial expressions, careful to avoid nasal excretion or outbursts of methane, I am writing a musical, which is a crazy thing for an old man to do. The chance of my writing a hit musical is less than the chance of my winning the U.S. Open, but so what? Success is not what old age is about; it’s about having a good time. This musical has stuff in it that won’t be found in The Lion King or Chicago, such as an excellent duet about making love.

Dogs mate and cats mate,
Even older couples copulate.
Let’s us unite and get tight.
People driving through drive-throughs mate,
Even folks with high IQs mate.
Let’s undress and coalesce.
Episcopalians of course mate
Even if it’s not right.
And there are Quaker women
Who have ten Mennonite.
Folks who make headlines mate,
Where no one can see.
And porcupines mate,
Very delicately.
It’s a delight to unite,
When push comes to shove, let’s make love.

A First Gentleman wouldn’t write a song like that and it’s nothing you could sing on public radio and even if I finish the musical it’ll never get produced. Too outdated. But hopelessness is no problem for people in my age bracket. It’s just good to be busy. I hope Joe is enjoying being Leader of the Free World. But if my wife takes him on, he’ll have to get smarter quick.

The meeting will come to order (bonk bonk)

Any American who saw Jim Jordan, the alleged chair of the so-called House Judiciary Committee, on TV Wednesday could’ve been charged with contempt of Congress for his harassment of Judge Merrick Garland, an excellent legal mind and dedicated public servant, Mr. Jordan being a bully and a hack from a gerrymandered district in Ohio who got his law degree from a church school in Columbus and never took the bar exam. He was a champion wrestler in the featherweight class and though heftier now, maintains his featherweight status. He never held a job but went straight from college into politics. Interviewed in 2018 and asked if he’d ever heard Donald Trump tell a lie, he said, “I have not.” He has been called “nuts” by Lindsey Graham, who knows about nuttiness. He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and then sent a note to the White House asking for a pardon in the event he was prosecuted. Ten days before leaving office, Mr. Trump gave Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a closed-door ceremony. He appeared before me Thursday under an independent subpoena issued pursuant to 515.2 U.S.C. and I hereby read into the record his testimony:

ME: A whistleblower has submitted a detailed firsthand account of you beating your wife and I ask: when exactly did the beating cease?

HIM: I wish to say that —

ME: Answer the question, Yes or No.

HIM: If I may, this is a —

ME: Let me ask this: when did you discontinue your use of fentanyl and was your dealer not a man named Guido who ran a shoeshine stand outside a porn shop?

HIM: I have no idea —

ME: Was it recently or are you still using?

HIM: If you’ll please allow me —

ME: Look at this photograph of a crippled dog: did you kick the dog or did you instruct someone else to do it and are you familiar with animal cruelty statutes in Ohio?

HIM: I don’t know exactly —

ME: When President Trump urged Americans to take disinfectant by injection as a cure for COVID, did you do as he told you to do?

HIM: If you will permit me—

ME: I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

ROGERS: There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. If all politicians fished instead of speaking publicly, we would be at peace with the world. That’s why I love dogs: they do nothing for political reasons.

ME: Thank you. The HJC is the best show on television and it is predicated on the assumption that 51% of American voters have the intelligence of an adolescent Hereford and they take yelling and smirking as evidence of high principle whereas studies show that only 31% of the voters are certified idiots. I yield to the gentleman from Baltimore.

MENCKEN: Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses. If a Republican had cannibals among his constituents, he’d promise them missionaries.

ME: The HJC hearing Wednesday was viewed by only a million or so, most Americans having work to do, but it was fascinating to watch elected representatives work hard to create an elaborate distraction about Joe Biden’s wayward son even though Garland had given a Trump appointee the powers of a special prosecutor and there was no issue but the representatives created the sound of conflict by rapid-fire questioning. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record —

EDITOR: Without objection, so entered.

HIM: What is Hunter Biden’s shoe size?

GARLAND: I do not —

HIM: Were his footprints not found on the floor of the Biden garage next to the deep freeze where bundles of hundred-dollar bills were packed into a Ukrainian ukulele in the vegetable tray? Yes or No?

GARLAND: With all due respect —

HIM: And is it not true that Hunter Biden discarded his illegally obtained pistol into a dumpster where it could’ve been found by a ten-year-old child and used to carry out a mass slaughter in an elementary school?

GARLAND: I’m sorry but I am — ME: I recognize the gentleman from Missouri. TWAIN: There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. It has a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.

Thank you, Mr. Twain. The column is adjourned.

Sing on, dance on, good eye, ain't you happy

A good week is a good week; let smarter people deal with the debt ceiling crisis and popularity of authoritarianism, my week began with a happy Sunday in church with a lot of blessing going on — sprinkling the schoolkids, the choir, the congregation — and our rector looking joyful as she marched around casting holy water on people — I thought she might like to use a squirt gun or a watering can or the sprinklers in the ceiling. Her sermon cautioning against perfectionism was, for want of a better word, perfect, and we sang a lively Shaker hymn —

O brethren ain’t you happy, ye followers of the Lamb.
Sing on, dance on, followers of Emmanuel,
Sing on, dance on, ye followers of the Lamb.

which for an old fundamentalist brought up to believe that rhythmic movement of any sort is wickedness incarnate, was rather exciting. And we confessed to a whole new set of sins such as wasting the earth’s resources, treating its inhabitants unjustly, and “holding future generations hostage to our greed,” which immediately made me feel bad about Medicare, and we admitted to not observing our kinship with all of God’s creatures, which seemed to say we’d now embark on a vegan diet, which I’m not yet ready to do, I’ve given up pride and greed and envy but not the bacon cheeseburger.

I flew off to Minneapolis to attend a Twins game and stayed with my beloved in a hotel that used to be the Milwaukee Road depot where, when I was 18, I took the Hiawatha train to Chicago solo, a big step toward independence and sophistication. The old train shed still stands and I walked under it and recalled the tweed sport coat and chinos I wore, the knapsack I carried, the pack of Marlboros in my pocket. But that was then and this is now.

Minneapolis was my big city as a kid growing up among the truck farms to the north, and at the age of 10 I rode my bike into town past the manufacturing plants that have been converted to condos and through the red-light district, which is now respectable, to the public library and big rooms with long tables piled with fresh new books and if that doesn’t make you want to be an author, then what will? I mostly love the changes and ignore the rest.

At the game I sat next to a true Twins fan named Alex who gave me the lowdown on various players and yelled the right things — “Looked good to me!” at the ump who’d called a strike a ball and “Good eye!” at a Twin who let Ball 3 go by and “Throw him the meatball!” at the opposition pitcher who had an 0-2 count on a Twins batter.

It was a big pleasure, the proximity to genuine fandom. I’m old and out of touch. I paid $45 for a Twins cap: in my mind, it should’ve been $5. The Kramarczuk’s bratwurst stand doesn’t take cash, only credit cards. I don’t get it. What country is this? But I bought one, with kraut and mustard. I’m not used to the raucous music blaring every half-inning though it thrilled the row of girls ahead of us who stood up, hips shaking, arms waving. I come from the era of intense silence. I may be the only person in the ballpark who remembers the fall day in 1969 when Rod Carew got on base with a double, took a big lead, stole third, and the fans sat transfixed in silence, knowing he might do it, wishing he’d do it, and then he did it — he took a daring lead off third and dashed home and slid under the tag and we jumped up and yelled, “YES!” We didn’t need the Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” to rouse us, the feat of stealing home was enough. I can still see it in my mind, his perfect timing, the headlong slide.

But there were three triples hit that day, a classic exciting moment, the ball hit to a far corner and perhaps bobbled, the fleet runner dashing, the base coaches windmilling him on. It’s still clear in my memory, and so is the Shaker hymn, which I hope the choir does again someday and if they start dancing, I’ll join them. And someday I may bring a little pipette of water so that if the rector blesses us, I can bless her right back. And bless you, dear reader. Here comes the meatball.

Waking from wacko dreams to think clearly

Never mind what you’ve been taught, some problems have simple solutions. The cure for bad habits — lying, for example — is to stop doing it. Don’t waste a psychoanalyst’s time trying to discover the underlying causes of lying — the basic cause of lying is stupidity, or arrogance, take your pick.

And then there’s the problem of Supreme Court ethics and justices accepting valuable perks from billionaire pals, which may lead to a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. The simple answer is to raise their salaries: a quarter-million a year is not nearly enough to support a Supremacy lifestyle in D.C. There are psychoanalysts who earn more than that. Raise the salary to a million-five so Clarence Thomas can afford to charter a jet and not be indebted to a robber baron. Require the justices’ clerks to spend two years as public defenders before they shop around for fancy jobs with big firms in 15th-floor suites with big walnut credenzas.

And the unprecedented dilemma of a presidential candidate under multiple indictments and his trials possibly delayed until after the election: the answer is to break precedent and conduct a single trial on national television with the entire adult population empaneled as a jury. Let the nation hear the evidence and render a verdict. Then hold the election, and if he’s a convicted felon, send in a substitute.

I came up with these ideas at 4 a.m., which is when I do my best thinking and thank goodness I’m a writer so my business hours begin upon awakening and sipping my first cup of coffee. I think everything would work much better if everyone woke up at 4 and spent a few hours thinking, then went to the office at 9 with good ideas. Work until 2 and go home. Nothing good happens after 2 p.m. You know it and I know it.

Waking up at 4 a.m. is my idea of “woke,” not the stuff and nonsense that goes by that name. I’m not that brand of woke, Bud, and that’s no joke. It’s all smoke and a whole glossary of gelatinous phraseology by which the dreamers in our midst rain fire down on behalf of victims of yesteryear while ignoring the cruelties of today under vicious tyrants whose victims head for — guess where? — America to find decency and to survive, meanwhile the dreamers give the bullies of the right a dead horse to beat and thereby elect officialdom to enthrone tycoons and beat the peasantry into submission.

America is a good country that’s provided hope and sustenance to countless refugees. I take an Uber car and the driver is usually Hispanic or Muslim, often with limited English, but thanks to GPS they can navigate and earn decent money. I encounter workers every day whose English is limited, who may well be refugees, and whatever life they make here is a vast improvement over violence and starvation back home.

I do my best problem-solving after waking from wacko dreams in which tall pines fall and comets crash as fierce carnivorous beasts clamber out of the stormy sea and I ferry a band of foreign orphans across a raging river to a safe haven. I wake from this drama feeling cleansed of all anxiety, and anxiety — dread, the yips, creeps, sense of malaise, call it what you will — is the enemy of clear thinking. My dear mother was a worrier and she never left the house without imagining she had left a faucet running, the oven on, a door unlocked, and so she sat in church contemplating grim scenarios of flood and fire and robbers when she should’ve been praising God for His watchfulness over us.

In her old age, Mother lightened up a great deal and put her worries aside and when she was 94 I put her aboard a flight to visit Scotland, her ancestral homeland, and she, a formerly fearful flyer, was lighthearted as a schoolgirl. She suffered some hard blows, the deaths of beloved sisters, the death of her oldest son, Philip, the loss of her husband, but these troubles seemed to rid her of anxiety. She adopted the wisdom of old age — when your time is running out, why waste it on worrying about what might happen, enjoy each day as it comes — and now that I’m old I’ve adopted it too. I wake up at 4 a.m. and I am truly grateful. I plan to go to Scotland in the spring. Why not? Let’s go.

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