Dear Mr. Keillor,
I am studying abroad this year in the U.K. and, while I'm having a great time here, I occasionally get homesick and like to listen to old shows archived on the website.

I recently listened to a show from 1985 that sounded somewhat familiar, one with Chet Atkins and Willie Nelson, which aired the day before my third birthday, and remembered that my parents taped it and used to play it during long car rides to keep us from throttling each other. Thanks to whoever keeps the website.

Alison

Dear Alison,
Glad that your studies are going well and that our website can help cure the foreign-student blues. I’ll bet your emotional connection to that old show is five times stronger than anything I’d feel if it brings back memories of the back seat of the parental car and you and your siblings in a parlous state. I remember that it was in the hills east of California, and I’d been on the road a lot and had to write the show in one afternoon in a motel room. Chet and Willie and I posed for a photograph on the loading dock behind the theater. Willie seemed extremely shy, very polite, and the consummate pro. He had a big hit back then, which I wrote new cat words to (“For All The Cats I’ve Ever Known”) and which he sang with good humor. And that’s all I remember. We did the show and I went back to the motel and slept and in the morning I got on a plane and went somewhere else. It was a furiously busy year. And I still found time to fall in love and carry on a courtship and marry. Please don’t do that right now, Alison. Or ask me before you do.

Dear Garrison,
Some years ago, in the comic strip Doonesbury, Gov. Ventura described you as a "malignant hemorrhoid". Do you consider this one of the highlights of your distinguished career?

Ren Hood

Dear Ren,
I think that the phrase "malignant hemmorhoid" is a highly polished insult that shows quite a bit of thought on Mr. Ventura's part and I'm proud of him for putting out the effort. He drowsed through most of his governorship and any sign of wakefulness on his part is of interest to us Minnesotans. I wish him well, though. He appears in the trailer for the Jackie Chan version of Around The World In 80 Days and he's wearing a rather snazzy wig and sitting sulking in a tent. Too bad he wasted four years on politics.

Dear Garrison,
I grew up in Minnesota but have spent the past seven years in San Francisco and I am often startled at the ignorance of coastal people when it comes to the Midwest. To many Californians, the Midwest is just one giant wheat field. How can I put these people in their place with humor and grace without sounding overly defensive?

Ingrid

Ingrid,
We Midwesterners are good travelers and good citizens in strange places, and one thing that makes us so is our sense of humor and our ability to carry our identity lightly. I’ve met Minnesotans in London and Copenhagen and Berlin and New York and L.A. who adopted and adapted, learned new languages, learned the lay of the land, came to love where they were, and never lost their essential Midwesternness, never lost their deep abiding love for the prairie and the rivers and farms, but didn’t wear it on their sleeve. One advantage of growing up here is that there is less narcissism in the drinking water. Find a picture of Minnesota that you love and hang it on your dining room wall and if people ask about it, tell them, and if they don’t, they don’t.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I suffer from ennui, melancholy, and nostalgia for places I've never been to. There's a word for that but I forget. Anyway, listening to your show makes me feel, well, hopeful. You wrote something once about God and the end of one's nose that always makes me feel better. And I am really enjoying your new book.

Thank you,
Phoebe

Phoebe,
Nothing wrong with melancholy and a little dip in the road sometimes. I don’t suffer from ennui much, maybe my memory is not good enough, but nostalgia for strange places, yes, of course. I look at old color photographs taken in the late Thirties by Farm Service Administration photographers of small towns in Alabama and a place called Pie, New Mexico, and feel a powerful tug. Of course, having been born in 1942, I am closer to that era than you are, but the sight of those weathered faces and those faded clothes (faded by laundering, and not for fashion) and the musicians sitting in the corner of a living room playing and the dancers kicking up their size 12 feet ----- it makes me wistful. And then I remind myself that penicillin wasn’t around back then and neither was the open-heart surgery that saved me from an early death from congestive heart failure. And that reduces my nostalgia somewhat.

Dear Garrison,
I have decided to take your advice and stop shopping so strenuously for a life companion. I watch my friends torture themselves with Internet dating and other excruciating stabs at making a connection with a "soul mate" and think that I just don't care to work at it that hard. As you said, it's not like picking a book off the shelf. Not like shopping from a catalog either, although I have to admit to wishing I could order one of those guys in the Lands' End catalog.

No, I think I'll keep doing what I do and going where I go and enjoying the day. I plan to take a sailing class just because it interests me. So many times lately I've seen how things I need are provided when I need them. I was at a yard sale on Saturday and a friend was selling her dryer for $25. Her washer had gone out and so they bought a new set. What is it with people whose washer and dryer have to match? I don't get that. Unless it's in your living room, why does it matter? I just want one with a real knob you can use to turn it on, and not have to use pliers as we've had to do for years now. One that doesn't groan and scream as it dries the clothes--as if it's protesting that it would really rather be doing something else. One that doesn't leave black grease marks on all your whites--especially that new white shirt you just bought and all the white sheets, even the flannels.

So I bought it, and took it home, and we're all happy. I figure that when the universe dictates that I'm ready to try the relationship thing again I'll look up and some guy will be standing there smiling goofily at me like he's just seen his first Corvette. Until then, life is grand. It could be a lot worse, don't you think?

Your show is one of the simple pleasures I enjoy. Keep up the good work.

Nancy in Georgia

Nancy,
I'm glad you got the new dryer. I have an awful one that won't dry anything and just heats up the wet clothes and I have to spread them over chairs and hope that unexpected company doesn't come. As for the guy, I think you should keep your flirting skills in good shape and enjoy mingling with men and reading their minds. If you have gay friends, you can practice flirting on them and they can give you a critique. But you're right, life is pretty grand. We'd finally getting summer here in St. Paul and we're bowled over by it. We had twenty people over to the house on Sunday and my wife and her friends played chamber music in the house and my friends and I sat outside under an awning and were dazed with pleasure. I've never been so boring in my life. Just sat and respirated and drank mineral water.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
My fiance and I are getting married in October in a beautiful old Lutheran Church. We’re trying to figure out what readings to have in the wedding ceremony, and we were wondering if you’ve written anything serious about marriage. Can you think of anything?

Stephanie

Stephanie,
I wrote a poem years ago that some people have used. You’re welcome to use it, otherwise you couldn’t go wrong with Shakespeare’s “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” or “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments”.

Here on an autumn night in the sweet leaf smell,
Walking through the dark under the starry sky,
Oh what stories we could tell
With these bright stars to tell them by.

O love that shines in every star
And love reflected in the silver moon.
It is not here, but it’s not far.
Not yet, but it will be here soon.

Dear Garrison,
I discovered your show when I moved to the US from France seven years ago, and would love to see the show live but apparently, there is something wrong with my San Francisco, because you never come to the city by the Bay.

What's wrong with SF? Worried about earthquakes? You've been to other geologically challenging places around. I can't think of a reason for you not to have a show here - can you enlighten me?

Manu

Ah my dear Manu,
I am in San Francisco so often that the doormen at the Huntington know me by name. I've done about six solo shows there in the past year, and a Conversation With Gary Snyder at the Herbst and another with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and in March my family and I vacationed in Alameda. No, Manu, the problem is with you ----- you're so engaged in the life of the city that you can't possibly notice a midwesterner coming through town (after all, you get thousands of them). Our little radio show sounds perfectly good on a Walkman tuned to KQED as you sit at Fort Mason and watch the kites and the sailboats flying by.

Post to the Host:
As a person who mostly votes for the Republican candidate I love your satire. My fellow Republicans who often complain to you about it need to get a life. I have yet to see any public official who wasn’t ripe for satire. Saturday Night Live has done a wonderful job making fun of sitting presidents for over a quarter of a century. If anything, I think you need to do more satire on your show.

Matt Willis

Matt,
Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don’t do politics anymore. I have no idea how to make it funny. What I’ve found pleasurable is singing the National Anthem with the audience in the key of G. It’s a real balm to the soul. Hope to do satire again someday.

From Garrison:

Last Saturday at the big Meadowbrook Music Park in New Hampshire, about ten minutes before airtime, during the pre-show warmup, I got the news that President Ronald Reagan had just died in Los Angeles. PHC goes on the air straight up on the hour, no NPR newscast, so I decided we should announce this death in some brief and fitting way and then offer a song ---- something ---- to give people a chance to reflect. No ponderous under-cooked essay, just a bow in Mr. Reagan’s direction in honor of the high office and his family’s contribution to our national life. The ON AIR light flashed, the band struck up “Tishomingo Blues” and I sang the theme and did the billboard and then said, “A great public man died today ----- President Ronald Reagan passed away in California at the age of 93.” There was an enormous intake of breath in the crowd, a big sad sigh that may not have been audible on the radio, in the midst of which came a big whoop from somebody sitting about eight rows back, which really rattled me, I must say, but I managed to go on and say a couple lines about how Mr. Reagan had befuddled us liberals by his sunny good nature and optimism and that his family was in our thoughts and then I sang (thinking of “lux aeterna” in the Catholic mass) a slow version of the chorus “Let your light shine” from an old gospel song, “Shine On Me,” and then “Where Could I Go But To The Lord?,” a sort of cheerful gospel song about meeting death, which came out in a New Orleans style, with our horn section.

Of course we’ve gotten a ream of mail from listeners, some saying “Thanks for recognizing President Reagan,” others saying, “Why didn’t you reprove those idiots in the audience who cheered at his death?” and still others saying, “How could you describe him as a great President? He wasn’t.” Some of the letters appear below.

I wish I’d said more about Mr. Reagan. I met him once in his office in Century City with my daughter Malene who was a film student at Columbia and who felt that the 1930s in Hollywood was a richer film decade than almost any other. When she asked him about Warner Brothers and mentioned some pictures, the old man bestowed his full charm on her, that sunniness of spirit that got him to the White House. All the derision and contempt that we Democrats shoveled in his path didn’t slow him down. I don’t think he was a great president but I’m not his judge. He surely was a great public man: he had tremendous sway and he changed things and made history. Anyone who goes into public life has to confront the legacy of Ronald Reagan. They will be arguing about him for the next hundred years.

The unfortunate person (or maybe there were two) who whooped at the news was innocent, I think ----- it was a reflexive whoop, a terrible gaffe but there was nothing mean or premeditated about it, and I’m sure the whooper felt bad enough on his own without me ragging on him from the stage. And it’s a free country. And to reprove him would have made him the center of things rather than Mr. Reagan.

Probably the old broadcaster whose death prompted this awkward moment might have enjoyed the whole thing ----- the old liberal host trying to think (while singing) of some appropriate words and the Shoe Band jumping in on the “Where Could I Go” and the whooper in the crowd, the whole mess. And then having to rewrite the catchup commercial to take out the references to death. It would’ve been less awkward to have ignored the news and plowed ahead with the show as planned. But this is radio. And for an old Democrat like me, confusion is almost second nature.

To PHC:
I take great offense at Garrison Keillor describing President Reagan as a "great" president. This is the president who brought us the Bush dynasty, Iran-Contra, and the devastating Reagan tax cuts. I've never heard anyone ever describe Reagan as a great or even a good president. The most forgiving thing that could be said about him was that he presided over this country while in the early stages of Alzheimers. He was asleep at the wheel. At worst, he was a con man, an actor, who went through the motions of being president, while representing the interests of the very same people we now see tearing this country apart.

Do we regret his passing and offer condolences to the family? Of course! But to call him a "great" president.

A listener in Massachusetts

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I began listening to your June 5 show which you opened with the announcement that Ronald Reagan had died. I was stunned to hear some members of your audience cheer and whoop. I'm not sure in whom I'm more disappointed: Them for being incomprehensibly disrespectful and classless, or you for not saying a word about their reprehensible behavior.

I know you can't be held responsible for every outburst from your live audience, but this was so clearly beyond the bounds of human decency that it demanded some response. I'm disappointed that you chose not to do so in the first few minutes of your show. If you did so later, I missed it because I had long since turned my radio off in disgust.

A listener in Mississippi

Thanks for all your letters. Turning off your radio in disgust is a grand gesture and I do it all the time myself. A great tonic. And now we are off to the great Methodist tabernacle at Ocean Grove.

Mr. Keillor,
I've been stationed on Balad Airbase in Iraq with my guard unit (F Company 106th Aviation) for one year and no end in sight (our orders stated we'd be home in October of last year, but Mr. Rumsfeld has seen fit to keep us a while longer).

I used to listen to your show every Saturday, back home in Illinois. My dear husband mailed a boxed set of four cassettes to me for Christmas, which was great. But they're getting repetitive.

Why not bring your show to Iraq? The USO sends Dallas cheerleaders, but that doesn't do much for the ladies stationed here.

If you'd like to visit, consider yourself invited.

Lucy Loftus

Lucy,
I imagine the USO knows what most of the troops want, and probably cheerleaders, starlets, country singers, hip-hop artists, and stand-up comics would rank well ahead of a dour old writer like me. I would only remind them of their English teachers.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I've always been curious about my friends in St. Paul who never listen to your show, and finally I asked them why they didn't, and they said that, in their opinion, you were an opportunist who had abandoned St. Paul for New York in order to make it in the big time --- they mentioned a Broadway show you had written that failed ---- and that you were a phony who played up the folksiness to appeal to self-hating yuppies. I was taken aback by their intense antipathy to you. Any comment?

Andrea
Boston

Andrea,
Your friends have the right to think whatever they want, but I never wrote a Broadway show and it wasn't opportunism that led me to leave St. Paul way back in 1987, more like the reverse. I shut down the show, left St. Paul, and lived in Denmark for awhile, and then in New York, where I had a couple happy years writing unsigned Talk of the Town pieces for The New Yorker. I don't know what your friends' idea of the "big time" is, but I had been writing for that magazine since 1970, so it didn't seem odd or unnatural to me. As for phoniness, it's something everyone struggles with as you get older: you sometimes hear stuff come out of your mouth that is tinny and sharp and not you at all, usually pretentious attitudinizing and fake expertise, and you pinch yourself and try not to be like that again. If you do a radio show, you are supposed to be friendly, I do believe, and maybe that's what they consider "folksiness". Tell them to lighten up.

Garrison