Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
People, I just plain don't have time for that. I'm busy writing sonnets, I want to talk with my wife, baseball season starts soon, I don't have time to hear about the landslide reelection that was stolen by Venezuelans.
The Christian faith sets some very high standards: "Ye cannot be my disciples unless you give up all you possess," Jesus said, which is disturbing to me as a homeowner with an IRA and a closet full of clothes.
The guys sleeping on cardboard in the bus depot — are they former Episcopalians who gave up their apartments for discipleship? Did they used to go out to French restaurants and then to a musical with a big dance number, actors with hands over their heads, singing about a beautiful tomorrow, and one Sunday morning the verse from the Gospel of St. Luke hit them on the head and they gave up materialism? And what did their wives say? Renouncing materialism is not an individual decision: others are involved. Was St. Luke married?
My wife and I enjoy materialism all the more in this pandemic. The coffeepot is basic to our life, and the laptop computer. We sit drinking coffee and talking and questions arise — did Nichols & May once do a sketch in which he kisses her passionately and while locked in the kiss she opens the corner of her mouth and exhales cigarette smoke Yes, and it's on YouTube.
The laptop holds the answers to all questions. Was Luke one of the twelve apostles? Nope. He came later, a disciple of Paul, a physician and a Gentile. How popular is the name "Gary"? Not so much. In 2020, only a few dozen American infant boys became Garyed, making it 774th on the list. (Liam is at the top. When I was born, in 1942, there were no Liams around. You could've aimed a fire hose down a crowded street and never dampened a Liam.)
Where would we be without Google? We'd be at the library, wasting our lives searching through reference books in the basement, looking up odd facts. I googled, "Where would we be without Google?" the other day and in 39/100ths of a second Google located 4,530,000,000 results.
If I spent one minute examining each result, it would take me thousands of years. So there's your answer. Thanks to Google, we get enough information to kill us many times over. In the old days, we experienced the world directly through sight, sound, touch, and personal memory, and now we look for it in a computer.
I worry about memory loss now after my cousin told me about a family reunion I had forgotten I put on years ago where there were bagpipers and her little daughter Maggie sat on my lap and said my eyebrows looked like caterpillars. I don't think I'm demented, but how would I know? Thank goodness, my sister found pictures of the party on her computer.
I was a writer back then, and now the young writers I know are working as Uber drivers because the publishing business is going the way of carriage-making and nobody I know is making a living from it. The Internet killed it, Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. And so I write sonnets for lefties to amuse people who consider me to be one.
When I think of you, Christina, my eyes get misty,
If any sensible man wished to be kissed he
Would want it to be your sweet lips.
You were a beautiful radical left-winger,
Marcher, protester, and folksinger,
With forty pins on your bosom for all your memberships.
I see you holding a sign on campus long ago,
The big letters: CAPITALISM HAS TO GO
Oh my darling Chris, if you kissed
Me I would gladly be a communist.
Your kisses would set off bright sparks
That turn this man toward Karl Marx.
We'd find a cabin to get warm and spoony in
And there would be a Soviet union.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "The Lake Wobegon Virus: A Novel". Buy it at a 33% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.