Garrison Keillor had the funniest column for the Fourth of July about how our society has degenerated to the point where nobody makes their own potato salad.

"... the family member assigned to bring the potato salad is likely to walk in with a couple of gallon plastic buckets of yellowish muck bought at a convenience store, the price stickers still on them, and set them down on the table with no apology whatsoever. Or, if they have more disposable income, they'll bring paper containers full of brownish muck from the natural organic sustainable united empathetic co-op.

If you bring garbage to share with your family, the least you can do is tell a lie and say, "I couldn't make the potato salad myself because I am bipolar and my lover left me and my dog has leukemia and I have an oozing leprous sore on my mixing hand.

It is not that hard to make potato salad, people. Take half an hour from your Facebook page and do the job right."

Here are my (and Garrison's) general guidelines for homemade potato salad:
Boiled potatoes, hard boiled eggs, chopped celery, chives, and green onions. Mix with mayonnaise (he says he makes his own, but I don't), and maybe a little sour cream. Use plenty of dill weed and sprinkle paprika on top. I slice one of the hard cooked eggs to lay on the top as a garnish. And sometimes I put some finely chopped sweet pickles in mine, but never pickle relish, and a little prepared mustard.

Garrison says both chives and green onions, which I think is a little bit of overkill. One time I heard him say that pumpkin pie is just an excuse to eat nutmeg, otherwise it's worthless, but I think he meant to say it's just an excuse to eat whipped cream. I happen to really like pumpkin pie, so I don't agree with him on this, just giving you an example of how he might get carried away and mis-state something once in awhile.

Garrison continues: "The eerie-yellow store-bought stuff in the tubs was manufactured at Amalgamated Salad in Houston by un-documented 12-year-olds from the hills of Michoacan. Worse, it is teaching our children that accomplishment doesn't matter. A child being served yellow slop out of a bucket is being told that it's OK to plagiarize a term paper off the Internet just so long as it's poorly written.

What if Thomas Jefferson had been too busy hobnobbing to write the Declaration of Independence so he just downloaded a bunch of stuff he found Googling "independence" and coming up with stuff about indolence, pendants, incontinence, but hey, close enough, and he pasted it together and they all signed it and wet out to a movie? Not good."

Amen to that, Garrison, I'm glad you said it so I don't have to.