Steve Barnett, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Cast and Audience, Dave Moore, Prudence Johnson, Dave Moore. Peter Ostroushko, Vern Sutton,
The Farmer Is The Man ( Greg Brown , Butch Thompson Trio , Peter Ostroushko ) Charleston rag (Butch Thompson Trio ) Cats may safely sleep ( Vern Sutton ) It might as well be spring ( Prudence Johnson ) Bluebird of happiness ( Prudence Johnson ) Toccata & Fugue In D Minor (Butch Thompson Trio ) Bist Du Bei Mir ( Vern Sutton ) Bach Medley ( Steve Barnett ) You Get A Line and I'll Get A Pole (Dave Moore ) El Barranca (The Canyon) (Dave Moore ) How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times ( Peter Ostroushko ) Happy Birthday to Bach (Cast and Audience ) Spanish fandango (Dave Moore )
Fearmonger's Shop (Gangrene) Garrison Reads Letter (Garrison Keillor - Letter from Bach to cousin) Lake Wobegon Lutheran (Sponsor) Minnesota Language Systems (Negotiating Dessert!) Pastor Ingqvist PHC Cast (PHC Cast tells Bach's Story) Powdermilk Biscuits (Bach's musical interests and practical problems / Don't dismiss artists just 'cause you don't like their admirers. )
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's been a warm week up there, too, just beautiful. Almost all of the snow is now gone up there, except for little bits, of course, way back in the woods. There's always snow in the woods, though, little bits of it, way back, very deep in the woods. Nobody goes back there, but there's snow there year round. It's where the snow snakes go during the summer. You wouldn't want to go back in there, but there is snow there, but elsewhere it's pretty much melted. And it's starting to look as if something might turn green up there just any moment, skunk cabbage at least, or or something, and there are some people who are thinking that this may be it. It might be spring, even though it's only March up here. Even at the Academy of American Weather, which meets at the Chatterbox Café, there are some in the American Weather Academy who Some of the older scholars, a few of them, think that, well, this might be one of those early springs that we get in the north ever so often. When the robins come up from Missouri early in March, and one thing just leads to another, you get your first spring thunderstorm, and you get your first mosquito bite, oh, about the end of March, early April. About April 15th, you get out your lawnmower. I think it might be it. Most of them in the academy are more cautious than that about spring because they've seen so many years when spring did come early and was here for a couple of weeks, and then winter came back to do another number and tell some jokes and take a few bows and dance around for a while. And so if you tell them that you think maybe this is it, maybe this is spring, they'll say, oh, ha. You wait and see. And they will keep an eye out all through April and well into May, waiting for that late blizzard that will prove them right once again on this point. And even into June. these real conservatives. They'll lighten up a little bit, but they'll still keep an eye peeled to the northwest. And if, say, we got a hailstorm in July, they'd say, you see? You see what I meant? There it is. Last of winter. Mr. Berge at the Chatterbox One of the members of the academy does think that this might be at spring, really. And he is wearing his bright Hawaiian shirt underneath his parka. That beautiful, gorgeous, gaudy Hawaiian shirt that he bought at the Lutheran church rummage sale. He buys all his most colorful clothes there. Because, you know, every year for their birthdays and sometimes for Christmas, Lutheran men in Lake Wobegon receive a gift of clothing from their wives, sometimes from their daughters or sisters, who think that they, the men, ought to wear something brighter and more colorful, something dressier, like a yellow sweater or real bright green plaid pants. Or red socks, red tie, something, a little color to it instead of navy blue and brown. And these colorful clothing gifts are worn by these men for about 45 minutes. And they say, thank you very much. I really appreciate this. And then about three years later, these clothes are dug out of closets and are sent down to the church for the rummage sale. And Mr. Berge buys them, almost all of them himself. He has a pair of Hawaiian sheets, too. Same rummage sale. Mrs. Diener got them for Harold, her husband, for their wedding anniversary. He didn't like them. He said they kept him awake at night. That was the point, but he didn't get that. So Mr. Berge bought them cheap. He keeps them on his bed. He says, oh, they make me feel young. They make me feel like I'm at the state fair. He's a hopeful man for his age. He's full of hope. He's one of the few men I know who will bend down and pick up a nickel. Most guys won't, you know, anymore. And he's a lot older than I am. I won't bend over, pick up a nickel. I'll bend over, pick up a quarter, sometimes a dime, depending on how I feel. But he will bend over and pick up a nickel off the sidewalk. Anytime he sees it, that's a hopeful man because it might be his lucky nickel, you see. That's why he does it. He told me that. I asked him once why. He said, well, he said, you know, years ago when I was your age, when I was young, it was on a spring morning I was out on the porch and I was drinking a cup of coffee, you know. And my wife called me in the house. She said, come in, listen to this on the radio. So I put the cup down, I went in, listened to it. I came back out on the porch and I finished up the coffee and what I didn't know was that a mosquito... had come and laid her eggs in my coffee. And I drank it all. And you know how many eggs a mosquito lays. There's like millions of them. I drank it all down. I had more mosquito eggs in my stomach than there are stars in the sky. And it was warm down there, and it was moist, and all of them hatched out in my stomach. and ordinarily they wouldn't. But you see, I had put a lot of cream in my coffee, and so my stomach acids weren't as strong as they would have been if I had drunk my coffee black, which I should have. So these mosquito eggs hatched out, and I started to feel funny, kind of jumpy, and real nervous. I didn't know what was wrong, and then I felt a few of them bite me. And then all of them started biting me. I was rolling around on the ground. It hurt so bad I couldn't even tell them what was the matter. I couldn't cry out for help. It hurt so bad. And then they stopped. And then my stomach started to itch from the inside. And it about drove me crazy. I went in and I ate six boxes of bran flakes. And I didn't chew them or anything. I swallowed them whole, bran flakes, so as to scratch my stomach. Well, it cured the itch. It cured the itch. But I got stomach cramps and gas pains like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't walk. My wife had to drive me to the doctor's. I got out of that car. I could hardly walk across the sidewalk. It hurt so bad. And then I looked down, and there was a nickel on the sidewalk. Ordinarily, a person in my predicament would not have reached down for a nickel, wouldn't have reached down for a five-dollar bill. But I thought to myself, I says, that's my lucky nickel. And I bent over and reached and got it, and my problems were cured in an instant. Never had a problem with it ever since, or if I did, I didn't notice. That was my lucky nickel. Yes, sir. Now that's a hopeful man. That's the man who looks on the bright side of things. Oh, we're all hopeful up there because the robins have arrived. For a lot of people, though, it's not the arrival of the robins in the spring that really signals spring so much as it is the first bluebirds, and they came this last week on Wednesday, the first two of them. Little blue flash in the bushes. You can see them. Oh, it's so exciting. Every spring, little blue flash in the bushes, and they landed in Mrs. Eklund's backyard, landed on her clothes pole. And Ella Anderson saw them from next door in her backyard. She was easing her way down her back porch steps with a load of garbage. On the way out to the garbage can, she saw that blue flash walking, hobbling down the steps, poor old Ella Anderson, who can barely walk on her poor old ruined hip bones. Saw those blue birds and her heart just rose. And she looked over there and she said, psst. And both of them flew right into her heart. Backyard, Ella's backyard. They came when she called. She said, psst, and the both of them come. Mrs. Eklund saw this out her back window. She came out back. She said, Ella Anderson, shame on you. She said, I saw what you did. Those bluebirds landed in my backyard. Those are my bluebirds. It's not right, and you know it. It's generally known about Ella Anderson that she can call birds. just that way, just by saying, psst. And they come, wild birds. They come right to her. And you would think people would be able to accept this and not get angry at a 72-year-old person who has very arthritic hips and can barely walk. But they're infuriated at her every year. some fascinating bird comes into your backyard. If you live near Ella Anderson's house and you look out and there it is and you rush to get your Roger Torrey-Peterson bird book and you come back and it's gone. And you look and there it is over in Ella Anderson's backyard with about 3,000 other birds. And you know she's just gone, psst, and that bird flew away. And you say, Ella, And she looks at you and she says, Bohemian waxwing. So that people who live near Ella Anderson, their backyards are bare. They've got feeders, they've got birdhouses, no tenants. And look over to Ella Anderson's house and there's her picnic table in back with hundreds of beautiful birds on it, eating the scraps and the seeds off that table. People say that she puts whiskey in the birdbath She gets those birds loaded. That's why they stay over there. Other people say that they have seen her put snus in the sunflower seeds. She gets those birds addicted to nicotine. Those birds come to her like junkies to a dealer. But the truth is, the truth is, it's just that sound, psst, and one other sound. No cats ever come in Ella Anderson's backyard. Because if she ever sees a cat, she just looks at that cat right in its two little beady eyes. And she says, And that cat looks at her and says, Hey, okay, fine with me. I'll just leave it. Never comes back. Two sounds. One to draw them. One to defend them. Ha! And she's got hundreds of beautiful birds on her picnic table. Old woman barely walk, easing her way out there. Birds out there singing to her, a choir of gorgeous birds. She takes out a brown bag, birds hovering around her, skinny old woman. dumps the seeds and the scraps and the fat and the wheat and the corn out on the table, birds flying around her. They look like they could pick her up and carry her away, and someday they will. Someday she will arise and go to the skies. Pastor Enkvist calls on her still every Monday or Tuesday and gives her sort of a condensed version of his sermon from Sunday. And it was partly because he knows that he's going to do that, that he decided last Sunday not to use a text from the Song of Solomon for his sermon, the one that begins, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, because he is shy for a minister. And the thought that he would have to sit in a living room and look at a 72-year-old woman and say, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, He didn't think he could do it. The passage that says, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. That was another reason he didn't use that text from the Song of Solomon because he had heard it might snow and so didn't want to put the Scripture in the position of giving a bad weather forecast. But mainly he did not use that text from the Song of Solomon because he did not want to encourage little Lutheran boys to get back there in the Song of Solomon and look around for some of the fascinating stuff that a person will find in that book, which Solomon wrote, I think, when he was in an awfully good mood. Someone who was a very good friend of his must have been around in the vicinity. Those verses about my beloved and thy lips and thy neck and thy breasts. So he skipped it. But he should have known that all little Lutheran boys found the Song of Solomon a long time ago, probably about the time they learned how to read. Whenever the sermon gets long on Sunday morning, a long sermon on stewardship or something, they go straight for the Song of Solomon. It's a beautiful place in the Song of Solomon. There are trees and apples and fruit and flowers back there and some pretty steamy passages, too, that a person who has been through a long Minnesota winter can really enjoy. I know because I used to turn to the Song of Solomon regularly on Sundays. I remember one time when Brother Johnson was speaking to us in Sunday school on the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins. I drifted back to the Song of Solomon and that beautiful part. Thou art fair, my love. Thy teeth are like a flock. of young sheep that are even shorn. Thy lip is like a thread of scarlet. Thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate between thy locks. Thy neck is like the Tower of David. Thy two breasts are like two young deer that are twins feeding among the lilies. And it was that point that I coughed from excitement, but it came out wrong as a kind of a nasal cough, and it made the boys around me snicker. And Brother Johnson looked down at me and said, well, if it's so interesting, why don't you share it with everyone? and read it out loud. I looked away. I hoped he'd forget about me and just not notice me. But he said, hmm, why don't you stand up? Stand up and read that. I stood up. I didn't know what to do. And then I did something dishonest. My eye flashed from thy lips, thy neck, to the other page, and I read that instead. I read, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, for, lo, the winter is past. The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come. The voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the sweet grapes give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. I read out loud and said, Thy two breasts are like two young deer that are twins, which feed among the lilies. Selah. Amen. and sat down and drew a long sigh of relief, which I believe I will do right now. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, and all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Bach's 300th birthday. Reading Bach's letters. GK once in love with a girl organist who played Bach. Garrison discussion with Prudence ~ Equinox / Winter in Minnesota.
Star Tribune Mar 21 1985
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl