Brother, Can You Spare a Joke?

Garrison Keillor, during a live broadcast at the Paramount Theatre of his public radio program A Prairie Home Companion, April 3, 2010.

Photo: Doug Churchill

“THIS IS A CITY that loves books, even though Amazon.com is here, which gave us the Kindle. People in Seattle still like to open a book and turn the pages. There’s all sorts of bookstores around town here. It’s a city with a whole lot of high-tech companies, so chances are that the people you meet on the street are smarter than you are, especially if you are over 50, but they’re extremely polite and they would never ever point this out to you. I’ve been walking around Seattle this last week, and every so often you see somebody who’s kind of windblown, and you reflexively reach down into your pocket to pull out some spare change. And then you look at them and they’re not homeless people—they’re just Seattleites. That’s all. They’ve been outdoors. They’ve been in the wind and the rain. They’re not panhandlers; they’re programmers. They may be panhandlers someday, but they’re perfectly all right.”