Monthly Archives: January 2014

Reading Keillor

1980 era book by Garrison Keillor 'Leaving Home'

1987 book by Garrison Keillor
‘Leaving Home’

My current bedtime reading is ‘Leaving Home’ (1987) by Garrison Keillor, who wisely said “Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted. We know that as we remember some gift given to us long ago. Suddenly it’s 1951, I’m nine years old, in the bow of a green wooden rowboat, rocking on Lake Wobegon. It’s five o’clock in the morning, dark; I’m shivering; mist comes up off the water, the smell of lake and weeds and Uncle Al’s coffee as he puts a worm on my hook and whispers what to do when the big one bites. I lower my worm slowly into the dark water and brace my feet against the bow and wait for the immense fish to strike.

Thousands of gifts, continually returning to us. Uncle Al thought he was taking his nephew fishing, but Continue reading