Charlie Rose

JimBullis  12/14/2012 02:04 PM Report

Garrison Keillor,

A friend suggested that you might find a strange new kind of farm machine amusing, and well, also interesting; especially to a prairie Democrat.

It is not made for the mass industrial farming that is so successful on the prairies of Iowa and some of Minnesota.

Please look at the video on youtube, Miastrada Dragon, and imagine how it could work on the smaller farming world on the edges of the prairie. We used to call this kind of farming, truck farming, where the general produce is grown.

It was intended as a way to make manual farm work more appealing and less injurious to the workers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq5eIVVvdgA

This might seem to be too self promotional, though it also can be seen as only a beginning in a long campaign to make a big change in farmers' ways.

Ellen_Dibble  12/12/2012 12:49 PM Report

I'd have enough smile for both of those two if I saw them walking down the street, but they are opposites in that one uses his megaphone because "I have no social skills," and the other I think we can assume uses his megaphone for the opposite reason: because he has social skills to spare. Keillor's show is a treasure; perhaps we take it for granted because it's come along so long, but each one is alive in ways that can't be bottled and preserved. It moves our national story ahead a tad, seemingly "not that bad," but very good medicine, even for Lutherans and Republicans. Laughing at yourself is best of all. New York could use a lot more of that.

REMant  12/12/2012 11:18 AM Report

I enjoy Keillor despite his philosophy, tho I've never made an effort to tune into the program, it coming at a very bad time anyway. I've read several of the books. I just turn everything he says around and look at it from the perspective of those awful Lutherans and Republicans. Personally I think he owes them a lot more than he realizes, or lets on, surely the self-deprecation, not much in evidence in the president's other supporters, and I think he needs to take into account that most populists and progressives have switched parties in the past century or two, rather like the Congregationalists turning Unitarian-Universalist. Forbes, I believe, thinks St Paul a very nice place to live, nevertheless. But if you want to experience insularity of the sort mentioned, just look at The Washington Post website. Or for that matter Charlie Rose, where it's always possible to talk about dysfunction and then blame everyone else for it. A Prairie Home Companion has done a lot for Dixielanders like Butch Thompson; not, however, I think, Pete Seeger.