A Prairie Home Companion

I wanted to start this post with It's been a quiet week in...my hometown" but I'm afraid Garrison Keillor claims ownership to that line.

My darling husband and I met just over 8 years ago, and I think back on these years with a certain nostalgia.  This was a time before we had a farm, a time when we gardened on a plot of our dear friends' farm, a time when my stepson, Bud, was still in diapers.  I was traveling through the Berkshires and across the Hudson to visit, still holding down a teaching job in Massachusetts. It was a time when I pondering my next step in life, not wanting to be apart from my soon to be husband.  I applied to a graduate program not far away from where we would eventually settle in a field that would prove to be exciting, but not very applicable to the job market in upstate New York.

During the colder months of these two years, my darling eventual-husband and I would often spend our Saturday evenings in quiet companionship, listening to Prairie Home Companion, a mutual secret love.  I grew up listening to NPR, and my family collected the Lake Wobegon recordings on cassette.  I think there are a lot of us Lake Wobegon wannabes even among the young adult crowd, and it turns out that most of my close friends have been regular listeners at one point or another in their lives. 

Visiting with a dear friend this afternoon I was reminded that my own life here in Upstate is in fact a bit like those who inhabit Lake Wobegon.  While we are well-informed of world events, the inhabitants of the village are very active in local community affairs.  We have three public buildings in our small hamlet of 1000 folks: the church, the grange, and the town hall.  All three buildings have a variety of activities going on, from meetings, lectures and workshops to quilting groups, dinners, dancing and variety shows (in fact, we have a variety show troupe that stages a show every year at the church and was actually a finalist on Prairie Home Companion's "Talent from Towns Under Two Thousand" about twelve years ago).  Much of the region is made up of similar villages, and it is quite possible to sustain oneself solely on covered dish suppers, spaghetti dinners and pancake breakfasts that are offered by each community's gathering center. 

All of these public gatherings provide grand means for propagating gossip.  Sometimes, it seems a bit like the old parlor game, telephone.  "He said, she said", "I heard, you heard..." and can get quite tiresome.  Sometimes, I forget how efficiently the rumor mill gets started.  Just last week, a neighbor (and pediatrician) approached my darling husband saying "I hear your wife is changing careers!".  Aside from this blog (which I know very few people actually read, and most of them are FB friends) I had told a grand total of five people about my career path.  Perhaps the small town living keeps us all honest to a degree and it's a good reminder to me to probably tell my boss of my plans before he hears it from another source first.

Sadly, moving to the farm, we have lost some connection to Prairie Home Companion and the News from Lake Wobegon.  The evenings often run late by the time dinner is cleaned up, animals are fed and baths are taken.  And, with all the hustle and bustle of the day, the three of us will often just collapse on the couch for a half hour before bed, wrap the flannel blanket around us, and read, enjoying each other's company in silence.