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One Nation, One People-God Bless Us Everyone
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Teaching Economics
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Cutting Costs In A Tough Economy
Garrison Keillor 11/25/2008
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I have bad news. In the midst of the worldwide economic meltdown we are experiencing these days, I have taken a hard look at revenue from this column and find that I am earning but a tiny fraction of the $6.5 million I had projected for 2008, which leaves me no choice but to impose aggressive cost reductions, including a 75 percent reduction in writing time and the elimination of editing. I apologize for the inconvenience. And I thank you for your patience.

I don't understand the economic turndown whatsoever and in fact wonder if "turndown" is a good word for something so catastrophic as to impel that bald man who appeared to be packing a revolver to accost me in the menswear department of Macy's in downtown St. Paul, which is where I live now -- I lived in New York for a while thinking it a prestigious place to be, but ten years of cruising the neighborhood looking for a parking place convinced me otherwise. I was scouting the sportcoats, which looked bulkier and gloomier than how I want to look. I'm aiming to be limber and natty (remember that word, from back when men wore bowties
and used hair pomade?) so that people's faces light up when they see me and they not take me for a repo man, which is why I've shed some avoirdupois lately so as to look less threatening. Anyway, he said, "Your column was all that kept me going the past eighteen months through a ferocious divorce from Melanie, the outsourcing of my job and repossession of my mansionette and a nasty case of traumatic hair loss, and now I'm facing a prison term for whacking my stockbroker, but your column is a ray of light in my life, and could you spare me $20 to buy a sparkly T-shirt for my little princess?"

He reminded me so much of a man I once took $3,000 off in a game of Roll 'Em poker in a back booth of Mom's Cafe in Tupelo, Mississippi, back in 1969 when I was road manager of The Locusts. That man was known as Uncle Earl and he was well sloshed on a drink called the Stroke, which I believe is made with rum, bourbon and sloe gin, and he was leaning hard on a bimbo in a red dress that displayed her glistening orbs like fruit on a plate. She was a fan of the Locusts, I discovered later.

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