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Someone to sit next to me
Jewish World Review ^ | December 7, 2018 | Garrison Keillor

Posted on 12/09/2018 6:59:37 AM PST by billorites

There's so much good news. Gorillas appear to be thriving, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, and there are about 361,919 of them, twice as many as had been believed.

Humpback whales, who were nearly hunted out of existence in the 19th century, are making a comeback in the seas off Antarctica: the birth rate is on the upswing, according to a recent study. (The animals are the size of a school bus and have a life expectancy similar to ours.)

And a study at the University of Michigan shows that people who work out even 10 minutes a day tend to be more cheerful than those who don't.

This is science, people. This isn't fake news. These conclusions are based on actual facts established through observation by people who can count. What I learn from this is that it brightens your day to skip the front-page stuff about Washington and focus on science. Someday I expect to find a study showing that 75-year-old men who rode school buses as children have a longer life expectancy. That's me.

I rode a school bus for six years, 12 miles each way morning and afternoon, on a highway in Minnesota, cornfields to the west, the Mississippi to the east. I stood at the end of a gravel road, a gawky kid with wire-rim glasses, wearing second-hand clothes, knowing there would not be an empty seat because mine was the last stop.

The bus pulled up, the door opened, I climbed aboard, and the driver waited until I sat down before he started the bus. Nobody squeezed together to make room so I had to pick out a seat with skinny girls in it and hurl myself at them and hold on for dear life as they tried to shove me out when

(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...


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This is the first thing I've read by Keillor since he was purged by the #metoo thing over a year ago.

Membership week has just concluded (I hope) on the public radio stations here in New England and not a word from or about Keillor.

Down the memory hole, erased, like he never ever happened.

It's not that I miss him. But he's sort of like Joe Biden: I'm just happy to know that he's out there somewhere.

1 posted on 12/09/2018 6:59:37 AM PST by billorites
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To: billorites

So is riding the school bus jammed into a seat with girls who did NOT want to be next to him, how he learned how to paw at girls who were busy saying, “No!” ?


2 posted on 12/09/2018 7:02:03 AM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: billorites

He is the mark twain of our generation. Just infected with liberalism. Great storyteller like twain


3 posted on 12/09/2018 7:04:43 AM PST by morphing libertarian (Use Comey's Report; Indict Hillary now. --- Proud Smelly Walmart Deplorable)
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To: billorites

“Somewhere on the school bus of life is one beautiful person who will move over and make room for you. That is all you need.”

He does have a way with words.


4 posted on 12/09/2018 7:04:46 AM PST by Mercat
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To: billorites

This piece is a self serving elitist Keillor at his worse.

Gee, I was a fat, awkward kid who girls rejected. Aren’t I lucky to have a domineering wife who orders me around like a puppy. Aren’t I a cute feminist male when groveling for forgiveness?

I’m too fat and awkward and cute to knowing sexually harass the girls in the office with unwanted advances. They misunderstood me!

Can I be accepted back into polite society yet?

Keillor is a vomit inducing piece of crap.


5 posted on 12/09/2018 7:14:23 AM PST by DeplorablePaul
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To: morphing libertarian
He is the mark twain of our generation. Just infected with liberalism. Great storyteller like twain

He bears similarities to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) to be sure.

Clemens was a budding Progressive, I have come to believe.

I detested the undercurrent of Keillor. His core beliefs seem quite antithetical to the whole idea of the U.S.A.

But he did a good job in this essay. Maybe he is growing up a bit.

6 posted on 12/09/2018 7:15:13 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: marktwain

Listened to him for year till he succumbed to trump derangement


7 posted on 12/09/2018 7:18:25 AM PST by morphing libertarian (Use Comey's Report; Indict Hillary now. --- Proud Smelly Walmart Deplorable)
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To: Mercat
“Somewhere on the school bus of life is one beautiful person who will move over and make room for you. That is all you need.”

Alternately, you can learn to be scary enough that most people just crowd themselves in the other end of the bus, and thus give you lots of room.

8 posted on 12/09/2018 7:18:27 AM PST by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
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To: billorites

What a charming article. We always loved Prairie Home Companion back in the 80s and and 90s before Keilor went hard left to the point of being unlistenable. Thanks for posting this, good to see bit of the old Garrison.


9 posted on 12/09/2018 7:21:42 AM PST by Menehune56 ("Let them hate so long as they fear" (Oderint Dum Metuant), Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC))
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To: marktwain

“Clemens was a budding Progressive, I have come to believe.”

Would a budding Progressive go to extraordinary lengths to repay every cent of debt he owed, like Twain did?


10 posted on 12/09/2018 7:24:00 AM PST by odawg
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To: Mercat

Great writers really shine when their lives are in shambles and have survived the urge to kill themselves.


11 posted on 12/09/2018 7:35:06 AM PST by caltaxed
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To: billorites

Has that smarmy rumpswab not yet died?


12 posted on 12/09/2018 7:36:25 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: odawg
Sure. Why not.

Early Progressivism existed in a Christian culture. Early Progressives pretty much assumed that Christian ethics were the natural state of affairs.

Mr. Clemens also deserted from the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He was only in for two weeks. It was likely a very smart move.

If you read most of Clemens works, you see the Progressivism coming out. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court is a great one.

Huckleberry Finn was way ahead of his time pushing for the downtrodden in a pre-war story, written and published long after the war was over. The contempt for the common man in Huckleberry Finn is palpable.

There is the worship of the "noble savage" in his writing about Hawaii.

There is the general downgrading of Christianity and faith, though not as much as today.

Samuel Clemens, (Mark Twain) was a great and talented writer. But he was an early, budding Progressive.

13 posted on 12/09/2018 7:40:26 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: Mercat
“Somewhere on the school bus of life is one beautiful person who will move over and make room for you. That is all you need.””

Says the guy with three (and a half)wives and a couple of cheap feels along the way.

I used to listen to Prairie Home Companion when I was younger and out fishing or walking the woods. His stories were humorous and innocuous and the music was generally good. Then, like the many of rest of his fellow Minnesotans, he turned to the dark side.

14 posted on 12/09/2018 7:43:36 AM PST by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals.")
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To: VanShuyten

Could not get past keilor’s mouth breathing — always wanted to shout step back from the mic!


15 posted on 12/09/2018 7:52:07 AM PST by HonkyTonkMan
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To: HonkyTonkMan

School bus of Life,,,
and I stepped into a
Wad of Gum that would
Choke a Horse!
Spearmint, of Course!
Of course,
Of Course.


16 posted on 12/09/2018 8:05:43 AM PST by Big Red Badger (Despised by the Despicable!)
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To: billorites

The only thing I liked about A Prarie Home Companion were the “Dusty and Lefty” and “Guy Noir: Private Eye” skits. I could stomach that because the production reminded me of old Firesign Theater bits. It _sounded_ down-to-earth, home-spun, folksy, and fun. Trapped somewhere between 1940 and 1960. But always barbs for the right, never the left. And Keillor’s sometimes-reedy, sometimes-sonerous smugness over all of it.


17 posted on 12/09/2018 8:16:58 AM PST by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: BradyLS
But always barbs for the right, never the left. And Keillor’s sometimes-reedy, sometimes-sonerous smugness over all of it.

Yes, that killed it for me. Keillor just simmered in his disdain for rural people.

18 posted on 12/09/2018 8:52:24 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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Keillor mocked Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” hat and his entourage of Fox News host Sean Hannity, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, comparing them to hospital visitors.

“The cap does not look good on you, it's a duffer's cap, and when you come to the microphone, you look like the warm-up guy, the guy who announces the license number of the car left in the parking lot, doors locked, lights on, motor running.”

Running for president won’t gain Trump the respect he wants because he lacks the discipline, Keillor writes:

“You walk out in the white cap and you rant for an hour about stuff that means nothing and the fans scream and wave their signs and you wish you could level with them for once and say one true thing: I love you to death and when this is over I will have nothing that I want."

19 posted on 12/09/2018 10:16:29 AM PST by proust ("The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.")
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To: morphing libertarian

He is the mark twain of our generation.


I reserve that honor for P.J. O’Rourke, a combination of HL Mencken and Mark Twain.


20 posted on 12/09/2018 11:06:51 AM PST by sparklite2 (See more at Sparklite Times)
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