St. Paul, Minnesota
Dear Friends,
Welcome and I hope you enjoy this weekend's live broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion." I've just returned from a whirlwind book tour to California and Arizona and am glad to be back, out of that desert and back to paradise. There are good people everywhere and I love to go meet them, but my gosh, when you drive around Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tempe it feels like a vision of The End of the World. Wall-to-wall strip malls, parking lots, franchise outlets --- it's uglier than the west side of St. Cloud. I did a poetry reading there and afterward stood around and talked to a few hundred folks and among them were many many Midwesterners who are homesick for back here. They miss their people. The high point of my trip was meeting the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti whose work I've enjoyed for so many years. He had coffee with me Wednesday morning in San Francisco and came riding up on his bike and tied it to a parking meter on Columbus Avenue and strode into the coffee shop, all bright and twinkly and full of mischief. A man of 60 is so pleased to see the vitality and good humor of a man of 83! (His secret: vigorous daily exercise. He swims and he rows.)
The painful part of touring is to be removed from my daughter, who is four. Whenever I saw little girls clutching their daddy's leg or hiding in their mother's skirt, I missed my kiddo, who is strong-willed and can be LOUD and has a big personality, like Eloise at the Plaza or Pippi Longstockings. She loves to crawl in with my wife and me around 3 a.m. and get crosswise in the bed and kick one of us out. So I've been suffering from sleep deprivation since 1997, and if you've noticed a decline in the show, that may be the reason. But she and I enjoy the same dumb jokes. And there is nothing so sweet as hearing a little girl yell "Daddy! Daddy!" and come running from a long way off and throw her arms around your neck and kiss you as if you were the Prodigal Son. When she grows up and becomes Cool and doesn't do that, I am going to be bereft. I am going to lie in bed and turn my face to the wall and cry. I may wind up pushing a grocery cart around downtown St. Paul with garbage bags full of treasures culled from trash barrels and arguing with streetlights.
Meanwhile, I'm glad to be home, and thanks again for visiting.
~Garrison Keillor