It's another day in Lake Wobegon . . .

So Sam and I went to see Garrison Keillor this past Sunday, at Boston Symphony Hall. It was a great hall but, as always, the seats were so uncomfortable. I think it's for the many symphonies and operas that get played there--or at least for the people watching them, because they couldn't get comfortable enough to drift off to sleep if they wanted to.


Sam did start to doze off, however, just about mid-point in Garrison's talk. She said he just had such a nice voice to sleep to . . . I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that. That, and it reminded her of when I read to her at night, just before she goes to bed. We've been reading Roald Dahl's The BFG for the past two years, because I can only get two pages into it before I notice that Sam's asleep. That and I have to preface every reading with what happened last time she fell asleep. Anyway, Sam had another comment about Garrison Keillor . . . after we left, she told me that she understands where I get my storytelling style from. Must be a Midwestern thing to tell stories that have a definite beginning, meander for an (indefinite) period of time, and, if you have the fortitude to pay attention long enough, will return to the definite beginning with an inconclusive end. It's not the story that's the point, it's the journey we take in its telling . . .

What did Garrison talk about? Well, he started off with a poem, then sang "Pretty Polly," a folk song in the tradition of the Child ballads (it has its roots in this particular Child ballad). After that he groused about literary traditions (paying particular attention to T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which he called "the poem that singlehandedly turns students off from poetry"). After all that, he began a thirty-or-forty-minute story which culminated in the meeting of a wedding, a funeral, Bruno the fishing dog, and thirty Danish Lutheran pastors in Lake Wobegon (the actual lake, not the town). It was great--if you want a recounting of it, just give me a call and I'll be happy to give you the gist of it. In the end, he had me laughing so hard that I was crying. It reminded me of all the times my Grandma Mack, Mom, Nicole and I would sit around, listening to his recordings on tape and laughing 'till our sides hurt. I'm looking forward to the next time I'll see him . . .