The Writer's Life is One of Digressions

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So I’m working on a new book and then suddenly I’m engrossed in an online story about a 5-bedroom 1.5-acre, $7.5 million home for sale in the Hidden Hills gated community in L.A. and what I loathe about it compared to where I am with my sweetie, in Manhattan in a 2.1-bedroom with a little terrace with hydrangeas where a mourning dove family has raised its young.

This didn’t happen back before laptops, when I did my writing on a legal pad with a Sharpie, the sharp kind. This is the fault of the internet, which makes all of human knowledge accessible by one fingertip. It’s hard to stay focused.

The five bedrooms tells me one thing: houseguests, perhaps the grandchildren of former friends who need a rent-free situation while they seek a development deal for their sitcom, “Living With Llamas.” And the low price — 1.5 acres should be asking $17.5 — tells me there’s a problem with feral mice escaped from a research facility or a waterborne virus that causes nocturnal suffocation. No, thank you, I’m happy right here. And the big backyard and pool suggest sunburn and skin cancer.

But the real problem isn’t the spaciousness or the price but the phrase “gated community” that sets off a loud alarm in the brain of an old Democrat. The idea of being too good to mix with ordinary folk goes against my upbringing in Minnesota. We lived down the street from the Welches who had a bigger house and more money but they didn’t erect a fence with a gate, for heaven’s sake. We grew up on Scripture and the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus was powerful. The beggar lay at the rich man’s gate, hungry, covered with sores, and when he died, angels bore him to heaven where he sat at Abraham’s side, and when the rich man died, he went to Hades and sat in flames. He looked up and begged Abraham to send Lazarus down to touch him and ease his pain and Abraham told him to go to hell. You don’t need a Bible scholar to figure this story out.

Living in New York, you can’t isolate yourself. There is no First Class car on the subway, no express lanes for limos. You walk the streets, you take the subway, you brush elbows with everybody. And you see poverty. In America, 21 million kids depend on school lunch and breakfast programs, and in the summer may be left high and dry, and all the more as long-term unemployment is over 25%.

A wealthy country with vast farmlands allowing its own children to live on the edge of malnutrition is, if I read Scripture carefully, a damnable sin. Malnutrition of babies can lead to lifelong disability. Think on it.

My dad grew up in a family of eight kids on a 40-acre sandy farm in the Depression but at least they had food on the table.

It’s not a partisan issue. There aren’t competing points of view. Every American — bikers, suburban moms, internet trolls, leftover hippies, conspiracy fans, unpublished poets — agrees on the principle that every kid deserves a good chance at life, farm kids, street kids, the banker’s boy, the debtor’s daughter. There is plenty of bad luck available later in life, it’s never going to be a just world, but couldn’t we at least guarantee, up to, say, age sixteen, good schools and sufficient sustenance?

This is a soluble problem. Churches operate free kitchens but it won’t be solved by that. It won’t be solved by my giving money to little kids panhandling in Midtown or the lady walking through the C train saying, “Can someone help me please?”

I’m told that it would take about $167 billion to eliminate malnutrition; about $160 billion worth of food is wasted every year. Somewhere in there is part of the answer. Call it Democratic socialism, call it Christian obedience, but it’s a principle we need to agree on. And then we need to agree on Medicare for everyone. This summer I’ve gotten hauled into a couple of New York ERs along with people with no funds, no insurance, and the absolute kindness of doctors and nurses testifies to the goodness of our country. Highly trained professionals leaning down to comfort one Lazarus after another — Abraham would be pleased.

And now that I’ve had the satisfaction of preaching at you, I’m going to get back to the book I’m writing. It’s funny, I think. Or was.

Garrison Keillor © 08.10.26