Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor & Me

Garrison Keillor is creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion which was first broadcast from the Janet Wallace auditorium at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 6, 1974.

Today, almost 40 years later, his tales from the fictional Lake Wobegon, which he calls "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve," are heard by over 4 million listeners each week on almost 600 public radio stations here and abroad.

Speaking about the show's long run on APHC's website, Keillor says:

"When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it's a good way of life."

I get Garrison Keillor. I grew up in a small, out-of-the-way Minnesota town - not unlike his Lake Wobegon - and can relate to the yarns he spins about the folks who live there and the warp and weft of their lives.

I also get Garrison because he and I are pretty close to the same age and grew up with the same stuff spinning around, over, under and through us: the dawn of the nuclear age; the dark shadow cast 'round the world by an evil Soviet Union; The Shadow and The Lone Ranger on the radio; Ozzie & Harriet, Father Knows Best and Bonanza on TV; the birth of rock & roll; the tragic deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P Richardson aka The Big Bopper; the civil rights movement; the murders of Jack and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; Timothy Leary and trips on LSD; Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and The Kingston Trio; San Francisco, flower children, Volkswagen buses and free love; Vietnam, draft dodgers, war protesters; the Beatles, Helter Skelter & Charlie Manson; Richard Nixon, Watergate, and on ... and on ... and on. Ahh! Yes! "Those were the days, my friend" ... sing along now ... "I thought they'd never end, we'd sing and dance forever and a day." Hmmm.

Times have changed, of course, just like Bob Dylan said they would, and when I get to looking back on those days of yesteryear, I usually get to thinking about how smart I thought I was; how I had all the answers. Maybe Garrison does too. But, once you get to be our age - Garrison's and mine - and if you still have your wits about you, it slowly dawns on you that you may not have been so smart after all. Or, as Garrison has simply and profoundly stated:

"You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories."

Stories ... they are the principle driver of learning that sticks in the human brain:

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten." - Rudyard Kipling

Stories ... they keep us from losing our way:

"If you don't know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don't know the stories you may be lost in life." -  A Siberian Elder

Stories ... they help us connect with others in a deep, meaningful way:

"We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome.  One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — 'Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.' " - John Steinbeck

Conversation:

• In Dreamgates, Robert Moss wrote: "Australian Aborigines say that the big stories - the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life - are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush." What is the big story you are meant to tell? How will it find you?

• Hannah Arendt has said: "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." How do you understand what she is saying?

• When he is talking to leaders, Peter Block often says: "Our ability to facilitate the learning of others is absolutely dependent on our own consciousness and on our willingness to make our own actions a legitimate subject of inquiry. Allowing the personal to become public is the act of responsibility that initiates cultural change and reforms organizations. Our need for privacy and our fear of the personal are primary reasons why organizational change is more rhetoric than reality. Real change comes from our willingness to own our vulnerability, confess our failures, and acknowledge that many of our stories do not have a happy ending." Do you typically share these kinds of stories? Why or why not?

Afterwords:

"The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances." - Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum

"Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them." - Aldous Huxley

"The leader who says ‘I don’t know’ essentially says that the group is facing a new ballgame where the old tools of logic may be its undoing rather than its salvation. To drop these tools is not to give up on finding a workable answer. It is only to give up on one means of answering that is ill-suited to the unstable, the unknowable, the unpredictable. To drop the heavy tools of rationality is to gain access to lightness in the form of intuitions, feelings, stories, experience, active listening, shared humanity, awareness in the moment, capability for fascination, awe, novel words and empathy." - Karl Weick

"Self-disclosure is the act of revealing yourself to others – your thoughts, feelings, intentions– telling your story. Another word for self-disclosure is 'intimacy'. This word is commonly associated with sexuality. But it really refers to familiarity and closeness. Intimacy can be understood better by pronouncing it as 'in-to-me-see' – a clear reference to self-disclosure. Why is intimacy so important? It builds understanding, trust, compassion, and commonality – all of which are essential to effective relationships. When you begin to understand other people’s stories, your heart softens. You find that their sorrows and joys are similar to yours, and that you have more in common than you ever thought. You draw closer and become more tolerant, more supportive, and more understanding." - Mark D. Youngblood, Life at the Edge of Chaos

"'I would ask you to remember only this one thing,' said Badger. 'The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good story-tellers. Never forget these obligations.'" - Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel

"A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it's time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer." - Garrison Keillor

"They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days." - Garrison Keillor

"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people." - Garrison Keillor

An Architect's Vision

Daniel Libeskind is a world renowned architect. He is most famous for being selected by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to oversee the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. He titled his concept for the site Memory Foundations. Some of his other projects include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, and the Wohl Centre at Bar-Ilan University, in Ramat-Gan, Israel.

Libeskind gave a presentation titled 17 Words of Architectural Inspiration last February at a TED event. The 17 words form the basis of his vision for the future of architecture. You can watch the presentation here. If you do, and if you happen to be an architect, you will most likely find yourself either nodding in agreement with what he says, or calling him a fool or worse. I say this because I didn't find many neutral opinions in the "Comments" section.

As I listened to him speak - with nary a shard of architectural savvy in my bones - I started to wonder how many of his 17 words can help form a vision for building a more satisfying and meaningful life. And, without doing much stretching, I can make a case for the relevance of all 17. What I want to do here, though, is to take just a few of the words and share the connections I made.

Optimism vs. Pessimism

Libeskind believes that architecture - more than almost any other profession - must be anchored in an optimistic view of the future. He said:

"You can be an general, a politician, an economist who is depressed, a musician in a minor key, a painter in dark colors. But architecture is that complete ecstasy that the future can be better."

There's not much to argue with here. Optimists fare better in nearly all aspects of life ... and studies have shown they live longer too. So, if you're a pessimist ... you have one more thing to be pessimistic about. On the other hand pessimism doesn't have to be a life sentence. Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and recovering pessimist, has shown that we can cross the bridge from pessimist to optimist by developing three specific cognitive skills. You can read about them in his book, Learned Optimism, which he wrote because his daughter kept telling him how big a grouch he was.

Hand vs. Computer

While admitting that the whole practice of architecture today relies heavily on the computer, Libeskind is adamant that the hand should drive the computer, instead of the other way around. He says this because he full-out believes that his best ideas come from an unknown, unseen source deep inside him and have to be teased out into the light through hand drawings and sketches. That being done, he is only too happy to open his computer and begin the process of turning his sketches into blueprints. He closes with a question for his fellow architects:

"How can we make the computer respond to our hand rather than the hand responding to the computer?"

This comparison raises several interesting questions. On a practical level, you might ask whether the technology you are using in your work and your life is your servant or your master. Do you really have to jump to answer your cell every time it rings? Should you open PowerPoint the minute you start preparing a presentation or should you sketch it out on paper first? Should email or text messaging be the default option in your communication with the important people in your life? On a philosophical level, you might wonder if you are living a life of your own design or following a template designed for you by others or even by circumstance. On a spiritual level, you could ask whether the fundamental choices you make are informed by your conscience - the voice inside you that tells you what is moral and good - or that which is expedient and self serving. I could go on with my list, but I am sure you get the idea. You can read more about this notion in the book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford. You can also read more abut Matthew's ideas in his New York Times Magazine article The Case for Working With Your Hands.

Raw vs. Refined

In this instance, Libeskind said he thinks of raw as "naked experience, untouched by luxury, untouched by expensive materials, untouched by the kind of refinement that we associate with high culture." And he believes that the creation of sustainable environments in the future will depend on the use of raw space or "... a space that isn't decorated, a space that isn't mannered in any source, but a space that might be cool in terms of its temperature, might be refractive to our desires. A space that doesn't always follow us like a dog that has been trained to follow us, but moves ahead into directions of demonstrating other possibilities, other experiences, that have never been part of the vocabulary of architecture."

Here I think relationships. I like mine raw or as open, juicy, and authentic as possible. I don't much like them refined or dry, stilted, and managed. All relationships? No, not all. Most, then? Yes. Including work relationships? Yes. Why? Because the more time I can spend with people I've come to truly know and care about, the better my life is for it.

Conversation:

• How are you generally optimistic or pessimistic? Would the people who know you best agree? Why or why not?
• How do you work with your hands? Does doing so bless your life? If so, how? If not, why not?
• How is a relationship either raw or refined as you see it? What is the balance between the two in your life? If it needs to shift, how so. If not, why not?
  

Afterwords:

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." - Langston Hughes

“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” - J. B. Priestly

"I promise you the sloth approach is the most successful life-maintenance program. So many of us waste our time being angry at our bosses, our families, our president, or even our God. The Sloth Plan, on the other hand, helps us to accept that there is no real hope for change. Power is in the hands of an elite, entitled few, and there is no reason to waste our lives howling in the wilderness." - Wendy Wasserstein, Sloth

"Deep down in people there is love and craving for the beautiful. There are many who go through their whole lives without ever knowing when they have liked or what they have liked." - Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

"'Hunches,' his mother used to call them. The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really just a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there." - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'" - C.S. Lewis