Forty years ago, Garrison Keillor contributed the following, one of his New Yorker pieces, to a book I produced called Celebrity: The Media as Image Makers. It served as the envoi to the book, which was a collection of essays by twenty-five writers and journalists. The authors were listed on the cover in order of their celebrity, led by Ingmar Bargman and Norman Mailer. Garrison placed next to last in our conceit — ahead of only someone named Mary McGeachy.

Then came A Prairie Home Companion — a prodigious achievement. …

by ROBERT RUSSEL

As if to prove that Marshall McLuhan wasn’t the only Canadian with a vision of the future, Robert Russel wrote this series of columns on “The Next Medium” for Take One in 1967. They are remarkably prescient, and we have reprinted the entire series so that you can judge the totality of Russel’s vision of the future. EVR was a precursor of videotape, a technology just ahead of its time that didn’t succeed. Russel’s vision of the “Commie” is just now taking shape, thirty years later. “Intersex” is not a word we use now, but any devotee…

I’ve always been fascinated by credit card fees. When your bank is already charging you any interest rate they like, why antagonize their customers further with hefty nuisance fees? It doesn’t seem to make marketing sense. (Just bump up that “default” rate to something even more usurious than it was before: most of your customers won’t notice.)

I’m old enough to remember when a credit card was a simple and honest relationship between you and your bank: You paid an annual fee for the service and they charged you an honest interest rate for the money you borrowed. …