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Speaker 1: I am a very fortunate man of eighty three, deeply

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indebted to American medicine, still in possession of the marbles

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I need, even though two weeks ago I took a

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bad fall in a hotel room in Nevada, wrecking my

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left shoulder and becoming a one armed man in need

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of assistance to pull on my socks and zip out

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my jeans. And the beauty of this is gratitude, profound

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gratitude for the lunch at Docs Restaurant in Manhattan nineteen

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ninety two with Jenny Lyne Nilsen, who was still with

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me thirty four years later. Gratitude is very appropriate at

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the age of eighty three. I've been to see orthopedic

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surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery, and he plans

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to replace this shoulder next week and promises that with

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therapy it'll work better than the old one. But mainly

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I am grateful for this woman I live with. I'm

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very aware of it every day as she hovers over me.

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I was aware of it last Wednesday evening as she

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guided me up the steps of Carnegie Hall to a

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concert of symphonies by Mozart and Shostakovich. By the Cleveland Orchestra.

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Jenny's parents, Ray and Arle were serious pianists, and they

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brought up their four children to love classical music and

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to play violin and with cruel tyranny and vulgarity and power.

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In Washington, d c. And in Minnesota, it feels like

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a moral duty to attend to great art, though I

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must admit that I'm no fan of Shostakovitch, and parts

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of this symphony his eleventh feel like a composition for

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fifty power saws and fourteen pneumatic hammers. But I yield

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to my wife's better judgment. A man walks up the

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steps with his left arm in a sling and a

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cane in his right hand, and he feels the empathy

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of strangers. New York is a city of pedestrians, and

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we pedestrians look out for each other. If I look confused,

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some one would step up and offer to help. But

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we walked into the grand lobby of Carnegie Hall, and

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up to the hall and down the aisle, musicians warming

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up on the stage, our seats about half way down

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on the right. And I remember a concert I did

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here nineteen eighty nine with Chet Atkins and Butch Thompson

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and the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. It was a dark time.

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Two years before I had announced that I was ending

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my radio show a Prairie Home Companion and moving to

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Copenhagen to be a serious novelist, which chedd Atkins knew

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was a bad move. The show was at the peak

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of popularity, and he tried to tell me I should

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change my mind, but I was too proud to back up.

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My son, Jason played guitar on the show. He was twenty,

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taking lessons from Chat, and he played a beautiful underscore

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under a poem that I read by my teacher, James Wright,

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about the eyes of those two Indian ponies darkened with kindness.

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I sang bass in the quartet. We sang the Lord

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will make away somehow, and I did the news from

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Lake Wobegon, and I remember thinking I do not want

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to give this up, but I did. I walked off

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the cliff until two years later I was able to

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climb back up. Mozart Symphony Number forty one and C

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Major The Jupiter was his last, a symphony that he

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himself never heard. Composed in the summer of seventeen eighty eight,

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three years before his death, along with two other symphonies,

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a piano sonata, other chamber works, A thirty two year

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old genius deeply in debt, having lost the favor of

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his noble patrons, caring for his ailing wife Constanza. Its

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heart breaking to hear the tenderness of the dances in

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the third movement and the inventiveness of the finale. The

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audience adored the Shostakovitch. They gave it a standing ovation,

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and brought the conductor back for five bows, And he

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gave bows to the brass, the English horn, the violdas,

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the timpany, the symbols, the strings, the winds, the harps.

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Shostakovich wrote it in honor of the Bolshevik Revolution of

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nineteen seventeen. But during intermission, Jenny had shown me videos

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she had taken of New Yorkers sliding Cedar Hill in

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Central Park, sliding on plastic saucers and pieces of cardboard,

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and baking trays and roasting pans. Also some skis going

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off a jump and flying in the air, landing in

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a cloud of snow. Tyranny is brutal and blind to

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the goodness and delight of life that Mozart found even

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in his summer of distress. We have a demod democracy here.

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The vintage of the grapes of wrath has been trampled out.

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The king cannot lie repeatedly and nakedly and demand to

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be believed