Help, I Can't Get Up.

I have returned from a five day trip to Brewster, a town on Cape Cod, MA. I traveled with too much luggage, camera equipment and clothes! As I was carrying my bags (two back packs and a large camera bag), the weight contorted my body. I would lean forward, very top heavy. I had moments of panic as I tried to walk down a steep flight of stairs at the Kendall train station in Cambridge, near MIT. It was rush hour, and I was the target of every malignant personality such situations seem to bring out. Immediately after such moments my thoughts often turn to Garrison Keillor. How would he describe this situation?

For those who are unfamiliar with Garrison Keillor and his radio show, a bit of history. If you showed up on July 6, 1974, at the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College in Saint Paul and plunked down your $1.00 admission (50 cents for kids) to attend the very first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, you were in select company. There were about 12 people in the audience. But those in attendance thought there were worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, so Garrison Keillor and the APHC team went on to produce close to 500 live shows in the first 10 years alone. There were broadcasts from this venue and that, until March 4, 1978, when the show moved to The World Theater, a lovely, crumbling building that was one plaster crack away from the wrecking ball. (Now fully renovated and renamed The Fitzgerald, it is the show's home base.)

Keillor reports the News from Lake Wobegon on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, broadcast live every Saturday afternoon over Minnesota Public Radio and public radio stations throughout the US. Lake Wobegon is a fictional town in the U.S. state of Minnesota, said to have been the boyhood home of Garrison Keillor. The name is a play on words, with several possible meanings: The word "woebegone" means "beset with trouble," while the phrase "Woe, be gone" indicates a dismissal of troubles. It can also mean to "appear shabby, derelict or run down", suggesting a town that has seen better days. On the show the town's name comes from an old Indian word meaning "the place where we waited all day in the rain [for you]."

Keillor has an uncanny ability to capture the moment, in a simple, but poetic manner that all can understand. As we used to say, "he cuts to the chase". For those younger than fifty, the phrase originated from early silent films. Such films, particularly comedies, often climaxed in chase scenes. An inexpert screenwriter or director, unsure how to get to the climax, would just make an abrupt transition, known as a cut.

As I was jostled and shoved, descending the Kendall Station stairs, I'm sure I muttered some simple prayer. I have no clear memory of what it may be, but I'm sure it expressed fear of injury, concern for my camera equipment and hostile, apocalyptic curses on those trying to break my neck. Since so much of my energy was focused on maintaining my balance, it would have been quick, and to the point. This morning it occurred to me that I need an all inclusive quick prayer that I can keep in my back pocket. I need something I can quickly recall for such emergencies. Sure enough, Garrison Keillor has a truly basic prayer. It doesn't meet all my needs. I want miracles. I want my enemies to grow horns from their heads, and even tails. I would like a solution for world hunger. I want my guardian angel to watch my back. However, it does "cut to the chase".

• Here I am O Lord and here is my prayer:
• Please be there.
• Don't want to ask too much, miracles and such.
• Just whisper in the air: please be there.
• When I die like other folks, I don't want to find out You're a hoax.
• Not down on my knees asking for world peace
• Or that the polar icecap freeze
• And save the polar bear
• Or even that the poor be fed
• Or angels hover o'er my bed
• But I will sure be pissed
• If I should have been an atheist.
• Dear God: please exist.

A post by a fellow blogger Ty's Blog has given me the opportunity to recapture some of my youth and let my freak flag fly. On May 15th Bloggers Unite will be joined by Amnesty International in an effort to draw attention to three specific topics: Human Rights In China, Illegal Detentions at Guantanamo Bay, and the Crisis in Darfur. On this day you’re invited to help bring attention to these atrocities by posting your views and feelings on them.

I joined Bloggers Unite, I'll be posting 5/15/08. Cause I feel like I owe it to someone.

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The Shadow is a fictional crime fighter created by Walter B Gibson. The character is one of the most famous of the pulp heroes of the 1930s and 1940s. Made even more famous through a popular radio series, the Shadow has since been featured also in comic books, comic strips,television, and at least seven motion pictures. Regardless, the Shadow is best regarded for its radio years, in which pulp crime fiction received perhaps its most compelling broadcast interpretation.

In the early eighties, Howard Chaykin set comics on their ear with the ground-breaking American Flagg!, a series that didn't just synthesize many of his themes into one cohesive work, but also brought page design, lettering and space into the overall effect of a book in a way that few had attempted. In the mid-eighties, DC tapped Chaykin to reinterpret the classic pulp hero The Shadow for a modern audience.

Even after decades, the unmistakable introduction from The Shadow has earned a place in the American lexicon:

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

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