Dear Mr. Keillor:
I love your show, but sometimes I worry about us fans out here in radioland and wonder if we're really holding up our end of the bargain to the best of our respective abilities. It isn't easy being a member of the Prairie Home Companion Listening Audience, and it isn't to be taken lightly. How can we better fulfill our responsibilities in this role?

Wally

Wally,
We would feel lucky to have ten listeners, let alone the hundreds we do have, and we are amazed that, with cable TV and golf channels and cooking shows and the panoply of entertainment available, anyone listens to the radio at all. You seem to be in good health, and not in assisted living, so I assume you’re able to get around and go to movies and such. So I’m tickled pink that you opt to spend fifteen or twenty minutes listening to our old radio show. The responsibilities are all mine, sir. Of course you should donate money to your local public radio station which depends on this for their sustenance. You should do this frequently and often. But do not worry about us Wobegonians. We feel lucky to be here and not in an adult correctional facility, and that’s the truth, Ruth.

Dear Garrison:
I wish you would quit enticing our Austin, Texas, performers out of town to perform at the other end of I-35. Leave them in Austin and YOU come back here and do a show. As for your version of "Dixie." It was as heartfelt as the one I used to hear as a kid, under the bed covers, on a crystal set as the radio station in my hometown in East Texas signed off at 10 p.m. in the 1950's.

I only hope my 19-year-old Marine, who listened over and over to my APHC tapes in the car, is able to hear you on AFR at his post in Iraq.

Warmest thanks,
Jim Dougherty

Jim,
The latest bunch was the Flatlanders, originally from Lubbock but they escaped there and found refuge in Austin, and after they sang on the show, I got to sit and have dinner with them in the St. Paul Hotel and listen to Joe Ely and Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore talk about Lubbock and Buddy Holly and the Sixties and Vietnam and their entire lives, and I’m not sure this would’ve happened if we’d been in Austin. These fellows need to get out of Texas in order to talk about Texas, which is true about home states and hometowns in general, and I really loved their company. They’re great musicians and songwriters and gentlemen and they have a gift for friendship. We need them up here.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I've been listening to PHC shows from the archives as a most pleasant way to keep entertained while working on the computer. I work alone at home most of the time, and have found that listening to the great humor, stories and music on your shows can chase away loneliness and ease the creative process.

Recently I listened to the May 31, 2003 show, and heard a song played by Peter Ostroushko and Richard Dworsky called "Psalm of the Prairie" which took my breath away with its sheer beauty and depth of feeling. I've searched through all Peter's recordings I could find, but have had no luck finding this song. If he as not recorded it anywhere, could you please suggest that he do so? I would be most grateful!

Many thanks for the years of listening pleasure you have brought me.

Sincerely,
Jill Ellis

Dear Ms. Ellis,
Peter has not yet recorded "Psalm of the Prairie". The next time I see Peter, I will pass on your kind words and suggestion that he record it. Thanks for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,
Kathryn Slusher
Music Producer

Garrison,
I had the great pleasure of attending your stellar show in February at the Wang Theater in Boston. My question concerns the messages you read just after intermission. This being Boston, I'm sure to be one of a couple of thousand people that night who were 100% certain that their message home was the most clever, pithy and amusing note placed in the pile. At my instructions, Mom was dutifully glued to the radio at 7 pm, waiting to hear what her thoughtful son had written to her. Naturally, we didn't make it. So what makes a winning message? Humor? Local color? Fine penmanship? A flattering word to the host? Or is it simply the luck of the draw?

Dan Quinn

Dan,
Flattering the host would pretty much guarantee that your greeting would be killed. Local color would help. Humor might help, depending on how it struck the screener: funny is better than un- and clean is better than un- and original is better than un-. As for penmanship, legible is always good, and of course luck is always good. I'll bet your note was darned clever and pithy and probably the screener just scratched it because ---- who knows why? I don't understand the process myself. If I had the time, I'd read all the little slips myself and make my own choice, but I don't and so there you are. Hard to find good help these days.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I was delighted to read of your ambition to become a nightclub singer. That is my ambition as well. However, something happened after the 50th anniversary of my birth, and now I'm wondering if I should just put away my dreams and stiletto heels, stop embarrassing my grown children, and act like a real Gramma. Any thoughts?

Warmly,
Mrs. Murray

Dear Mrs. Murray,
I'm 61, kiddo, and I'm a grandpa and I still have my dreams. Of course I have advantages. I do a radio show in a theater with a band and sometimes I get to sneak into the nightclub mode. Then I went to Berlin in February and what do they know about me there? Do they know that I'm NOT a nightclub singer? Nein. So I was, sort of, for one night. Now, during our run at the Fitzgerald this spring, I've added a late show on Saturdays, called The Rhubarb Show, and as part of it, guess what? You bet. Not for long. Not for more than one song. But I'll wear a black tux and maybe a black shirt and put some wax in my hair and look sullen and troubled and sing in a dark evocative way and we'll see, kiddo, we'll see.

Dear GK,
You've tapered off on political satire lately, which I find disappointing. Have you become a Republican? Or has NPR threatened you with expulsion if you continue to irk the Powers That Be?

Dale

Dear Dale,
I just finished writing a political book, HOMEGROWN DEMOCRAT, which comes out in May or June and which says what I care to say about politics, and having written the book, I don't feel the need to go down that same road on the radio. Anybody who wants to know what I think can lean up against a bookstore counter and read a few pages and get the idea. For the radio show, I'm more interested in stories than satire.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I am a soon-to-retire 6th grade teacher in a public school system always troubled by money problems and general angst. My career has gone by in a flash, and I forgot to get married. I am looking toward a nice place to retire. Are there really bachelor farmers from Norway in Minnesota? Are there any about my age?

Diana

Diana,
The bachelor farmers I talk about on the show (whose grandparents came from Norway) are not people you'd want to get mixed up with, but probably there are plenty of nice bachelors your age, some of whom might even be farmers, and I recommend the Internet as the net with which to go fishing for them. You're a teacher and you can tell a great deal about someone by their writing style and the Internet gives you a chance to examine this at your leisure without having the subject breathing at you across a table. And you can ask direct questions and raise sensitive subjects. And you can tell if somebody has a sense of humor. There are plenty of websites where single people can find each other. Make this a research project.

Dear Host:
I think that I may have unintentionally become a Unitarian, or at
least adopted a Unitarianesqe outlook. Are there warning signs? A check list?

Concerned,
Sam Stecher

Sam,
Tending toward the church of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Jefferson is no reason to feel shame, but if you want to know, one warning sign is a tendency to read ahead, while singing from the hymnal, to see how you feel about the lyrics, doctrinally, which means that you don’t sing very well.

Dear Host:
I remember, many years ago, that the Cafe Boeuf existed in the world of PHC. What happened? Did all the anti-French protests shut it down? Also, with Guy Noir, you used to sing the theme song ("He's smooth, he's cool...") and then it disappeared. Will it ever be sung over the airwaves again?

-Richard

Dear Richard,
Rich Dworsky wrote that Guy Noir theme and there's an odd flatted jazz note at the end that I, with my Sanctified Brethren ear, simply cannot get. So I won't sing the song, but maybe someone else will. Cafe Boeuf is still with us, though. Still offering the title entree as well as pigeon kidneys and trout throats and other delicacies, and still bravely resisting the nation's no-smoking laws.