GaryOsberg.com

  My granddaughter, Kaylin Marie, is a partner in a new venture that provides promotional products.  T shirts and stuff.  Zygoatian LLC is located on Main Street in Isle, Minnesota.  On Tuesday I left the cabin in Aitkin and traveled on a road that I had never traveled on before to visit the store.  I was very impressed.  In fact, I purchased a table that her father had crafted out of solid walnut. Photo attached.

The problem was that her cell phone provider does not have reliable service in Isle, so we drove to Mora to visit a Verizon store.  As most often is the case, the place was very busy.  Kaylin was working on her phone to get permission from her current provider to use her existing phone number on a iPhone, when an old man came to the door using a walker. Kaylin jumped up to help him with the door.  He sat in a chair and waited.  I was strolling around clad in my new jacket that I got for supporting our triple A radio station, The Current, during the last pledge drive.  When I took a seat next to him, he asked: “Are you 89 years old?”  No, I replied,  “I am 74 years old, why do you ask?”   “Well you have 89 and a third on the back of your jacket”.    “No, that is the frequency of a radio station, The Current, broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio”.    The power of promotional products.

Live From Here this week is an April rebroadcast from New York City with Sufjan Stevens, pianist Jonathan Biss.  U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, and comedian Colin Quinn.  Plus: Chris Thile’s Song of the Week celebrates an NYC icon, Rue St. Denis; Gaby Moreno sings “Down in Reverie”; we head gently to Funkytown with a few Breathy Acoustic Covers of Disco Songs; and our traveling correspondent Tom Papa succumbs to Twinkie-related emotion in Atlantic City.  Tune in on your radio or your smart device.

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.