Hello Garrison,
I'm a former Fargoite, consumer of rhubarb pie, Lutheran, and caught your show here in Reno a few years back and noticed a Jaguar parked near the loading dock of the theater and the bus and truck. Would this be your vehicle for road trips? My experience with British cars is that they might be beautiful machines but are less than reliable for traveling about the country. What has been your experience? Any duct tape emergencies?

Greg

Greg,
I've never driven a Jaguar in my life. It would scare me to death. Hertz in Boston offered me one once, in place of a Ford, and I shook my head. I'd get in one of those and fifteen minutes later I'd be screaming down the freeway at 150 mph and wind up as a steel sculpture on a bridge abutment. The bus wasn't ours either. On tour, we generally fly by Northwest Airlines and then ride in a 15-passenger van, the kind that a high-school girls' badminton team might use. The truck, however, is ours and that's driven by Russ Ringsak from Grafton, N.D. He's the one to talk to about duct tape.

Dear Sir:
I am an unregenerate Republican like the majority of people here in New Hampshire with the exception of my benighted colleagues and a few refugees from Massachusetts, but I went to your show in Gilford anyway, and now I’m wondering: what was Irene Bunsen doing at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility? Clarence and Arlene are Lutheran, and I had always supposed that Clint and Irene were as well. Have I missed something? Has Irene had a religious epiphany? Please solve this mystery for me and let me get back to worrying about more substantive matters, such as how to keep the deer away from my garden and the fisher cats from eating the barn cats and the llamas safe from rabid foxes.

Thank you.
Deborah Watson

Deborah,
Irene is indeed a Lutheran. That is most certainly true. So if in fact, at the Gilford show, I put her in the Catholic church, it was a gaffe of the sort that sometimes strikes the panicky heart. Unless it was divine guidance of the sort that your President gets on a regular basis. He is a regenerate Republican and God speaks through him, or so we are told. He has never admitted to making a mistake, so far as I can tell. (George W., that is.) I wish you well with the garden and the llamas. Barn cats tend to in-breeding and the Lord may be sending the fisher cats to weed out the dimmer bulbs. But Irene is Lutheran.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
At choir practice the other evening, as we went over "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee", sung to Beethoven's music, a tough hymn to sing, I discovered that the same words can be sung to "Mack the Knife," which seems to me to be a better tune.

Vince Reilly

Vince,
It may be time for you to take a break from choir if this is the direction your imagination is taking you. Finding new tunes for hymns is a form of thumb-twiddling. On the other hand, "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" sung to "Hernando's Hideaway" is a great musical experience. Ditto, Emily Dickinson sung to "Yellow Rose Of Texas".

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I am young, Republican and a fan of your show and as for those Republican folks who feel so compelled to complain about the political content of the show. It's such a shame that my party -- a party that was all about less government and letting people get on with their lives -- has become concerned about censoring TV and radio programs and telling people who they should marry. I work for a U.S. Senator, and I have contact with Republicans from our state all the time - and if ever there were people ripe for satire, they're it. Keep on doing what you're doing. When you do get political on your show, it's always funny and I love the show and look forward to Saturday nights every week.

Sincerely,
John

John,
Your plain decency and open-mindedness is a real challenge to my current biases about Republicans and you remind me of the Republicans I used to know, a sturdy and humorous bunch who enjoyed the give and take, especially if they had a cold beer in their hands. I don't consider complaints from listeners to be attempts at censorship, though, and rather enjoy the wittier ones, rare as they are. We don't do much that's political on the show, a little reference here and there. I'm afraid I'm too fearful and churned up over current events to try to be funny about them. So I leave them alone, as best I can. It's good enough to be good company, I think. One does not need to try to save the world every day. Sunday should be enough for that, and maybe some of Monday. Saturday, I think, should be a time to relax and put down the blunt weapons. Good luck to you, John, and I hope you're enjoying Washington life and your brush with history there at the Capitol.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Do you ever get tired of talking about Lake Wobegon? It seems to be everyone's favorite part of your show and you also have several books revolving around the Lake Wobegon universe. Do you really like it as much as everyone else or would you rather move on and write about other things?

Joseph
Hermitage, TN

Joseph,
That's a good question that deserves a thoughtful answer. I get tired of talking about Lake Wobegon in the same way as I get tired of being myself. One does now and then weary of being who we are. No? Doesn't everyone have this experience? A parent tires of being parental, a child of being the child, a Minnesotan can find midwesternness awfully boring and entertain fantasies of being French or Italian for awhile. Art is the great escape. Fiction, opera, music, drama, all help to get us out of ourselves and our narrow lives, our shelves of biases, our self-awareness. I took a walk through the Minneapolis Institute of Arts with my daughter and we looked at paintings ---- a little kid tends to be impulsive in a gallery and leap from one thing to another, not mow down the art ----- and that was a great afternoon for just the same reason. But I keep going back to Lake Wobegon because I'm not done with it and because it's a frame within which I can put most things that I want to deal with. And I'm not bound to it. My last book wasn't about Lake Wobegon and neither is the next (Homegrown Democrat). Lake Wobegon sits rather comfortably in my mind at the moment. Of course a person wants to deliver a monologue of some quality and that's always a struggle, but I'm used to hard work, and the outcome ---- standing on a stage and looking out and saying "It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon" and seeing how much I can remember of what I thought about that morning ----- is truly pleasant, believe me. Saturday morning can be hard, but Saturday evening is a real pleasure.

Mr Keillor -
My mother, a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, says that "Prairie Home" is a cemetery. Just wondering if this is True or False, and if True, how you found it to name your show after?

And how can I get my parents tickets to your show in Moorhead? I'd like to say I listen to your show every week, but it's fishing season and I have 4k invested in fishing gear.

Mark

Mark,
Your mother is telling the truth, of course, as undoubtedly she always has, and the Prairie Home cemetery near Concordia College was an inspiration to me back around 1970 when I went up there to do a reading and saw the wrought iron gate and immediately felt comforted by the thought of the prairie being our home, in this life and also afterward, and when I needed a name for the Saturday show, I remembered that. Your parents will surely be able to get tickets to our show up there in October ----- it's Concordia's homecoming weekend and surely alumnae and alumni will be given preference, unless they choose to go fishing. Four-thousand simoleons is a lot to spend on a rod and reel, Mark, but I guess you're grown up and know what you're doing. And when you teach a man to spend that much money on fishing, you certainly stimulate the economy.

Garrison ~
Recently my kids were watching an old re-run of Little House on the Prairie. I was awestruck by the brilliant blue skies, mountains, high-country pine forests and the semi-arid, desert like surroundings of Walnut Grove, MN. I've recently received some tourist brochures for Minnesota and it makes no mention of the beautiful scenery and weather. Why? Seems like it would be a good selling point.

Jack

Jack,
You are pulling my leg and it hurts. That TV show, which bore slight resemblance to the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, was filmed in California and we old readers of Little House are still upset about it. Walnut Grove has beautiful scenery and if you came out and looked at it, you'd fall in love with the place, and with DeSmet, S.D., and Pepin, Wisconsin. When I get old, maybe I'll offer tours.

Hello,
I am writing to compliment Garrison Keilor and Inga Swearingen on their duet on May 29 - "The water is wide, I cannot get o'er." The smooth gentle pairing of their complementary voices, and the harmony provided by Garrison, were beautiful. This piece was my favorite part of the entire program.

Thank you,
Kath Derr

Kath,
You're awfully sweet to say so. Inga has a gorgeous voice, very fresh and evocative and note-perfect, and that's the sort of person you want to sing harmony to, someone who will carry you. She's studying choral direction and I don't know why ----- she ought to be making CDs and going around singing to big halls full of happy people. I am very agitated over this but these young people know their own minds, or think they do, and it's hard to tell them what to do. We'll have her on the show again in the fall, and again and again.

Dear Garrison,
My daughter, Karen, who learned about your show from her high school teacher, tried for two years to get me to listen to it, but I work a hundred-hour week 52 weeks a year, running a business and for me to set aside a time to sit and listen to the radio was not in the cards.

Then one day I was leaving to go to a funeral, driving for five hours each way in a bad snowstorm and she ran out to the car with cassette tapes of five hours of your show and it was the perfect companion for such a day and now I listen in on the Internet whenever I want and it keeps me more or less sane. The show has an easy wit that can unwind even the most tensly knotted up and overworked individual.

Bob Laing
Ontario, Canada

Dear Bob,
You're working too hard, pal. I'm glad if our show can help you unknot a little and you sure need to take more five-hour car trips but do more people have to die so that you can take time off to go to their funerals? This lovely daughter of yours is going to give you grandchildren and you want to be able to see them off to college and beyond. A hundred hours a week non-stop is a killer schedule. You didn't ask my advice, but you get it anyway for free. Get in that car and drive slowly to Vancouver and stay awhile and then drive back and while you're driving, think about what you want to do with the rest of your life ---- the life that cutting back on this ferocious tension-building schedule will afford you. Thanks for your note, too. I'm glad you like the show.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I enjoy PHC immensely. I've never been to the show personally and I wonder if the performers have riders in their contracts like famous stars on tour do? Does Sue Scott require a white room with 70 vases of red roses and lighted perfume candles? Does Rich Dworsky ask for a specialist in Swedish massage to be available before and after each show? Does Pat Donohue's contract stipulate that if he's not delivered a case of fine Scottish ale he will not participate in the performance? Does anyone ask for Champagne, silk robes and slippers, caviar, imported bottled water or silver dishes? I'm dying to know.

Rina

Rina,
You're asking for personal information that I have no right to hand out, but it's the end of the season so what the hey. Let 'em sue me. Sue Scott's dressing room is black, she burns incense, and she lies on a vibrating couch and hums. We can hear her tremolo up and down the hall. Rich Dworsky is a vegan and his contract specifies that there must be broccoli, pea pods, grilled tomatoes, mangoes, and eggplant backstage, and no pork sausage in the same room as he, and mineral water from a particular spring in Maine (not Piscacadawadaquoddymoggin, another one). No Swedish masseur for him: his contract specifies that he must have absolute silence for 55 minutes before broadcast, so we have to stuff the hallway with mattresses and teach the stagehands to use American Sign Language. Pat Donohue's contract doesn't mention ale, the last I looked, but it does specify that six different staff people must compliment him on his playing in the half hour before showtime (e.g. "Your solo on the Powdermilk Biscuit theme becomes deeper and deeper with every passing week"). Also he likes steak, medium rare, with raw onions. You didn't ask about my contract, and the truth is that I ask nothing whatsoever but a chance to entertain others and bring happiness into the lives of my listeners. That's how I was brought up. Selfless. It's not everyone's way, but it's mine.

Dear GK-
Do you ever think about doing a show at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA? My son plays football there. The college has a good-sized ballroom, and the history of the place is really fascinating.

George

Dear George,
I’ve visited the College a couple times and the battlefield five or six times and I know the new incoming president of the College, Kate Will, who used to be at Augustana in South Dakota and then at Whittier in California. But doing a show at Gettysburg would pretty much obligate me to talk about the Civil War and the battle, and a writer hates to be obligated. And I don’t know enough about either to stand up and natter about them. I did a show on the other side of Washington D.C., Vienna, Virginia, home of Wolf Trap, and when you do a show in Vienna, you can talk about anything you want to, people don’t expect you to sing Strauss waltzes or give out a recipe for wiener schnitzel, you’re free as a bird.