As I mentioned in a previous post, Garrison Keillor is a great writer.  Witty as all get-out and poetic in an everyman sort of way.  His weekly pieces on Salon.com are worth following.  They’re easily digestible and usually provide a brief moment of thoughtful and artistic wordsmithing, which makes for a nice break from my business- and politics-minded routine.

One recent piece put words to a character trait of mine that I’ve always struggled to justify – the need for occasional periods of solitude.

There is nothing odd about wanting to be alone.  It doesn’t mean that I am spray-painting Nazi slogans on the walls and fantasizing about getting even with them what done me wrong. It doesn’t indicate male menopause. It only means that I am experiencing Personal Male Secrecy Syndrome (PMSS), the urge common to all men to climb a tree and sit on a high limb for a few hours…It is crucial in any loving relationship that the partners know when to leave each other alone without having to fill out a privacy application (Reasons for Needing Solitude, Goals of Solo Period, Estimated Time of Reunion). Don’t ask, don’t tell. Just go in the room and close the door. So long, see you later.

In another piece, Keillor paid homage to homemade potato salad.  He claimed, among other things, that children not being taught the process of creating something like a good potato salad are missing out on a key educational moment.

A child served yellow slop from a bucket is being told that it’s OK to plagiarize a term paper off the Internet just so long as it’s poorly written.

He ended that piece with the following flourish:

Attend to the details. Teach your children manners. Write cogent paragraphs. Drive carefully. And make a good potato salad, one with some crunch, maybe accompanied by a fried drumstick with crackly skin — the humble potato and the stupid chicken, ennobled by diligent cooking — and is this not the meaning of our beautiful country, to take what is common and enable it to become beautiful? All our beautiful young people — so diligent and focused and powered by hope — you can’t tell me those kids didn’t have parents who took time to chop the celery and onions and experiment with the ratio of mayo to mustard to achieve a potato salad that is worthy of our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

How can you not love that?