My Happy Weekend in the Sunny South

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I flew from New York last Thursday where a big parade in lower Manhattan celebrated the Knicks winning the NBA title and I flew to Raleigh where on Saturday crowds gathered downtown for a parade celebrating the Hurricanes winning the NHL championship, two joyous public events that had nothing to do with me, meanwhile my Brazilian friend Lenny is cheering for Brazil in the World Cup. I’m happy for all of them. The Latino kid with the tattooed arms, who runs the elevator in our building, was in a state of delight the morning after his team beat the Spurs in the closing seconds to take the title.

Everybody wants to be part of a great cause, a tribe, a fellowship, a sisterhood — everybody except Henry Thoreau the great American killjoy who chose solitude. Sit on it and spin, Henry, and when you come back to Concord, do something about your hair.

I did a solo show in Raleigh and when I walked out onstage, into a wall of applause, I decided to do something useful with all that good feeling, and I hummed a note, which the audience hummed, and I sang, “O say, can you see” — and they were all right there on top of it, and the crowd gave it their all, and I held my arms up for “And the rockets’ red glare” and they sang forte bravissimo all the way to the end and they held the note on “free” and sang “home of the brave” so sweetly, and gave themselves a round of applause.

The song doesn’t get sung as often as it should be. It’s a great song. Francis Scott Key, watching the British bombardment of Baltimore in 1814, started out to write a lament for his lost love Antonia: The Banner that we watched in Air So Proudly as it Gleamed But as I saw the Rocket Glare It was of You I Dreamed And as I waited for the Dawn To see if it still flew Or if ---- in Tatters ---- it was Gone ---- As happened, Love, with You.

But then he did the right thing and put aside his own miseries and wrote for the Greater Cause and created a song that has real power to bring people together, including old lefties and Unitarians and ironic skeptics, and fill them with love of country.

Meanwhile, my team, the Democratic Party, stumbles along, and I’m alarmed at some of the candidates the left comes up with, like if the Knicks out of a sense of equity had two starting guards under 4 feet, 6 inches, and I also wish some elderly blockheads would retire and let the gifted move up in the ranks. I saw an interview with Hillary Clinton last week that was painful — the woman is smart, well-spoken, speaks with authority about the Middle East and Ukraine, and is frank, referring to “the president’s private law firm once known as the Department of Justice,” and is funny, and you think of how the world would be if in 2016 she had defeated sexism and the Electoral College and defeated the guy whose name was briefly on the Kennedy Arts Center.

And now Iran has accomplished what America did in 1814, it stood up to British bombardment and survived and so the British withdrew.

But I am taking a sabbatical from the news. Life is so much better if I skip the front page. I walk around town and look at the carnival of humanity and it’s all one country, no polarization apparent except some restaurants are rather chilly. The bounty of America has drawn tides of immigrants and if you talk to the shopkeepers and waiters and cabdrivers, you can learn more about the world than from the paper.

They came here for opportunity, for freedom from fear, to escape murderous regimes, to assure a brighter future for their kids.

And meanwhile, the American people are standing up to the bombardment of stupidity and corruption and malice from Washington, D.C. The man has won the title of Worst President in American History hands down. In 2029, there will be massive parades across the country celebrating Mr. Maralago’s return to his imitation palace and we shall see by the dawn’s early light Air Force One make its last Palm Beach flight and the Star-Spangled Banner will happily fly as he disappears and we wave goodbye.

Garrison Keillor © 06.22.26