My Pen Pal, Garrison Keillor

With a new year often comes the resolution to be well. Do good work. Keep in touch. Sound familiar? That’s the famous outro to the daily “Writer’s Almanac,” hosted by legendary writer and radio host Garrison Keillor. He visited Alaska last year on a cruise and made a pit stop in Sitka to visit a pen pal. Because it turns out, when it comes to resolutions, Keillor is good on his word.

Downloadable audio.

Jasa Woods first met Garrison Keillor like most people do, as a disembodied voice on the radio. “A lot of beautiful memories of sunsets listening to Prairie Home Companion. We would take road trips or we would just be driving in the car to Walmart or on the way back from dinner, and that was always something my Dad put on.”

(Keillor singing on Prairie Home Companion: “Oh hear that old piano, from down the avenue…”)

Woods grew up with that voice. And in 2013, Keillor came to her hometown of Boone, North Carolina to perform. He noticed immediately her unusual hair – somewhere between copper and strawberry blonde – and at the time, it was short and stuck straight up. He posed for a picture, peeking through her hair. “He said, ‘Oh, I’d love to hire someone with hair like that,’ Woods said, chuckling. 

Time passed. Woods got a job in Denali as a park ranger. And when Keillor came to Palmer in the summer of 2015, she gave him a note with that picture inside. “I put my address on the back of the card. I just took a chance. And about a month later, my mom texts me and she goes, “You got a letter. I think it’s political because it’s really nice handwriting.” And I was like, “Okay, you can open it.” And she calls me on the phone. I was like, “Oh no, what’s the deal?” She’s like, “Jasa, this letter is from Garrison Keillor.” And I was like, “What!?!” (Laughs)

(Keillor singing on Prairie Home Companion: “I look whose coming, through that door…”)

She wrote him and he wrote back and pretty soon, they were exchanging letters and emails, every week. Woods said, “Every single time that I would open up my email inbox, it was just like, “OMG.” Even now it doesn’t feel like real life. That someone I could look up to for so long would want to be friends with me.

(Crowded coffee shop)

On August 26, 2016, the Prairie Home Companion cruise stopped in Sitka. I had an interview with him that afternoon and Sitkans were feeding me questions all day. “Can you ask what his favorite joke is?” “What’s his favorite cocktail?” Berett Wilber was working as a deckhand this summer and would often be standing in the pit, hauling fish, when the Writer’s Almanac came on.

(Outro from writer’s almanac…Be well, do good work, and keep in touch”)

Wilber: That’s how I mark the time. It’s like this unbelievable injection of poetry into the fishing experience. So I want to know, when he does that, does he imagine people are out there listening to him?

Keillor: I will now! From now, on for sure. I’m going to imagine a woman half covered with slime and blood and carcasses of fish.

Though Keillor has handed over the reins of Prairie Home Companion to Chris Thile, the Writer’s Almanac – a five minute digestive of poetry and history – continues. And most often, Keillor says, he’s writing for someone who is very busy.

“I imagine somebody…probably a woman with children who is in the kitchen. It’s early morning. There are children running around. And she’s making scrambled eggs. Everything you do in that five minutes has to be extremely clear. You are not there to blow smoke at her.

Poets like Mary Oliver. I did a poem by her last week, “Wild Geese,” that begins:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

That’s a poem that sends a clear message to this woman with the frying pan. And it’s not in the form of advice. But whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination and let’s you know where you are. Where you belong.”

Woods, the park ranger, and I sat there, kind of breathless, as this was happening. In the past year, through their correspondence, she and Keillor have become really good friends. He turns to her. 

Keillor: Jasa Woods, she’s a terrific correspondent. What’s interesting about her to me is that she’s living this adventurous life where you sign up for a posting for a short time and you have no idea where you will be six months from now. To me that’s a life so unlike my life that I just find it fascinating. I never told you that before, but you’re fascinating.
Woods: Thank you.
Keillor: Yeah!

Keillor says he wants to go to places like Alaska because he’s seeking grandeur. And he vividly remembers performing at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer last year.

Keillor: All of these Alaskans who were dizzy with pleasure of summer. And I walked out into the crowd and we sang. We sang ‘Swing low, sweet chariot.’

(Keillor singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”)

KCAW: That’s a beautiful moment.

Keillor: It was. It was absolutely transforming.

Keillor is working on his memoir. He’s turning 75 this year.

When you remove the celebrity of Garrison Keillor from the simple act of keeping in touch, you realize that words are are points of contact – a way to reach out and say, “Hey you, you’re going to be okay.”

A few days later, Woods and I talk and she says this is the Garrison Keillor she’s come to know. “Like he was admiring the way that I live or the things that I chose to pursue and that was sort of validation that, “You’re you,” and it doesn’t matter what you accomplish and what you do. The fact that you exist is beautiful, you know? That’s something to be celebrated in every person,” Woods said. “And I think that’s apparent when he’s done autographs. I’ve never seen him turn anyone away. He will always talk to the oldest to the youngest person and he wants to hear their stories. I think he just admires people for being who they are.

Which is fitting, in a way, for a man whose voice alone causes you to slow down, pull up a chair, and stay awhile. 

Keillor will continue to cruise with Prairie Home Companion, “seeking grandeur” as he put it. This summer, it’s in Norway.