The Writer's Almanac

Using StumbleUpon, I rediscovered Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. I'd heard it on the radio several years ago, but almost all my listening is done in the car. About the only radio I listen to while home is Fiona Ritchie's The Thistle & Shamrock on NPR on Saturday evenings. I don't recall if I'd seen the website for the almanac before, but I might've come across it. That would have been before I started using Bloglines, a site I use to keep track of sites I like to visit. When I came across The Writer's Almanac yesterday, I added it to Bloglines immediately.

I'm not really a big fan of poetry. I blame the lackluster public school education of a third-rate system in the '50s and '60s for that. But I like the idea of getting a poem a day read by Garrison Keillor. I've always liked the way he tells his stories.

There's a choice on the website of reading the text, listening to Keillor, or both. On the site, the poem is at the top of the page followed by other information about birthdays of noteable people which sometimes includes the author of the presented poem. The order is different when you listen. The poem is read after the other information. Also, what's written on the page differs from what Keillor says. There's usually a bit more detail in the writing. That's probably because the spoken version has to fit into a fixed time.

I'm finding that I'd rather listen than read at first, then pick up some of the details from the page after listening. There's also an email newsletter which I just signed up to get.

All in all, this was a good find.