The Once and Future Morning Show

Background: Garrison Keillor began his career in radio with a 6-9 AM weekday morning show, "A Prairie Home Entertainment." on Minnesota Educational Radio, in November, 1969 (Wikipedia). Minnesota Public Radio's "The Morning Show" has for many years been hosted by Tome Keith (a.k.a Jim-Ed Poole) and dale Connelly). That show will end December 11, 2008. It will be succeeded by a new Web-delivered show, "Radio Heartland," hosted by Dale Connelly. This is occasion for regret, appreciation, and anticipation.

Once upon a time there was radio, a big box in the living room around which you sat with the family several times a week and listened to music and news and had pictures appear in your head of places and people far away. Now, half a century later, there's an Internet, where among other things you can listen to old radio and have The Morning Show piped into your headphones, whether you happen to be at a lake in Minnesota, or on a college campus in Pennsylvania, or in an apartment in Morocco. I usually have other things going on while I'm listening to the Morning Show: a window open on the op-ed page of the New York Times, a Word document in which I make notes of what's going through my mind as I listen and read, an e-mail program in the background where I can share some memorable moments of music or news. Every once in a while a tune calls up the memory of some earlier morning, and I find myself googling my virtual desktop, where I might find a description of how I felt the day Jim Ed and Dale reacted -- to someone's asking for a song for her niece, who had just finished her PhD and got a teaching job -- by playing the old Frank Sinatra chestnut "My Way," but sung in Spanish by Joan Baez, and following that with a spot-on takeoff titled "Their Way," about how you get from living in the dorm and making lots of friends that had connections to winding up as that "cruel oppressor," the full Prof. So many mornings, so many memories, so many mental pictures linked in my diary to pieces of music that take me back to the boy of 15 in Ortonville, to the student of 21 at the University in Minneapolis, to the young professor on the Haverford campus in Pennsylvania, to the emeritus professor in Rabat, Morocco. Heartfelt thanks to all of you who have created this magic space: Garrison, Jim Ed, Dale. I'll see you around, in cyberspace.