Like the ice going out on the river

(Reuters photo.)

Leave it to Garrison Keillor to find the moment in the day with the most power.

Emotions ran high, but never as high as when the crowd realized that the chopper over their heads, the chopper heading away from Washington, was the chopper carrying the former president away from governance for the last time:
"When the blades started turning, the cheering got louder, and when the chopper lifted up above the Capitol and we saw it in the sky heading for the airport, a million jubilant people waved and hollered for all they were worth. It was the most genuine, spontaneous, universal moment of the day. It was like watching the ice go out on the river."

And I wrote all this before I realized Colin McEnroe had addressed the same topic yesterday afternoon.

Prairie foreclosed home companion

Though I wish he would sing a little less on his show, I've always admired Garrison Keillor for his nerdish stardom (an inspiration to all radio nerds, famous and not, from Ira Glass to me). He's parlayed a brilliant mind, a gift for storytelling, a sense of the under-appreciated and a face for radio into a unexpectedly long, successful and lucrative career.

He has given a voice to the Lutheran farmer, and the precocious teen in a flyover state who cherishes The New Yorker.

He is also a brilliant essayist, and more so when he's angry. And he's angry now.