Wait, Wait, Don’t tell me

A couple weeks ago when I heard that NPR’s 26 year old news quiz was going to be performed at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis we bought tickets for the show. It was a hoot. We will listen to the radio version this afternoon that will have to cut off over an hour of what we heard Thursday night. Because it was Minnesota and the audience was full of people rooting for VP candidate Tim Walz we missed some of the quips as a boisterous cheers filled the auditorium despite its excellent broadcasting acoustics.

As I write this before the programs broadcast you will find the previous week’s performance at the top of the wait wait queue. If you are reading this long after today’s posting look for the August 31st performance date.

The following morning at our hotel, the Chambers, across from the Orpheum one of the program’s three humorists showed up in the hotel cafe for coffee. Joyelle Nicole Johnson was one of the Panelists. Although we had been in the rear of the auditorium I suspected she had been one of the performers and asked her if she was. She said yes and I did a silent hand wave with my hands which was one of her signature moves and she smiled and told me it was her ninth appearance on the show. I paged through the wait wait sight and found a list of panelists. There were, if I counted correctly, 102 of them.

Before returning home we stopped at the Minnesota History Museum spending the majority of our time in a space dedicated to Minnesota’s Native Americans. I bought a book in the Museum store that my Dad suggested I read when I was in High School. It was an autobiography written by one of Minnesota’s foremost African Americans residents Gordon Parks. It left some vivid impressions on me. On our way to and from the Twin Cities we listened to the Pulitzer winning book by Jon Mecham written to explain previous times that America escaped the grip of earlier bouts of nativism that have resurfaced with the appearance of the Trump cancer. I had forgotten my wife bought it and offered it to me. For some reason I wasn’t inclined to read it then but in fact it covers a subject that my recent book was a modest attempt to nibble around.

The books in question:

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