Keillor Watch: Day 85

Now, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I think today’s column by Garrison Keillor is a call for Americans to rise against the machines. Either that or a subtle commentary on the Northwest airlines strike – delivered with his patented warmth and wit. I can’t tell. His observations on canning tomatoes, the protestant work ethic, and pressure cookers really hit home with me. Now I understand why our government agencies are ineffective in the face of natural disasters! Here’s a sample passage.

We’re not so different from the English gentry who settled on the Minnesota prairie in the 1870s and expended their capital to build a hunt club, a boating club, an Anglican church and a brewery to produce ale and porter. Unfortunately, they didn’t know how to plant wheat. They didn’t scatter the seed, they knelt down and pressed it into the ground, one at a time. The grasshoppers wiped them out clean. Their land was bought cheap by peasant Swedes who did much better. They baked the grasshoppers in a crust and called it pecan pie. They put their shoulders to the wheel and hammered and cut and made a life with their own hands.

???What???? Can anyone out there decipher this? Call in the code breaker, because there has to be a point to this Op-Ed piece. I mean, the Trib wouldn’t run it otherwise, right? Garrison was actually in the office the other week, and I think you-know-who has been reading the American Sector. I received not only the cold shoulder, but the evil eye as well. Lesson learned: Do not cross Garrison Keillor! Hold on. I know how to make it up to him! I’ll log on to Amazon and buy Garrison’s new book, Daddy’s Girl. What? It’s a kids book…. I swear.