Dear Garrison,
I saw something interesting today here in Ann Arbor, a Hyundai Elantra with a bumper Sticker, "LAKE WOBEGON, MINNESOTA." Next to it was one that said "BUSH/CHENEY '04."

Either your appeal is broader than people think, or theirs is...anyhow, I enjoy your show very much. I also support Bush.

Respectfully,
J. Corey

Mr. Corey,
Thanks for the tip. My first thought is that the previous owner, a genteel bohemian dad with poofy hair and a Save The Owls t-shirt and hiking shorts and Birkenstocks, gave the car as a graduation gift to his conservative son who is trying to get the old guy riled up. But I’m glad you enjoy the show. So do I. And I’m intending to have a good time with it this fall in the midst of terror alerts and the onslaught of propaganda and the pissiness of politics in general. Doggone it, we live in a great country, and here we are doing a show in St. Paul, Minnesota, that folks in Iraq and Kuwait and Afghanistan listen to, and I want to give them a good time. And maybe one Saturday, John Kerry will come on and teach the President how to wind-surf.

Dear Garrison,
We saw your show at Tanglewood. It was a wonderful setting. How long does it take you to prepare for a show like that? You seem so comfortable with the area. It feels to us like you feel at home there. Thank you for coming to us!! See you again next year!!

Nicky and Dennis Parrott

Nicky and Dennis,
Thank you for coming. How long does it take to write the show? It takes all the time available to do it. If I start on Monday, it takes me until 5:45 Saturday, and if I start on Thursday morning, it takes until Saturday at 5:45. That’s when the Shoe Band starts playing for the warm-up and I put on a white shirt and brush my teeth and check my fly.

We all love Tanglewood. For one thing, I love staying at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge and sitting on the front porch, which now feels homelike. It’s Norman Rockwell’s town and when you walk around Stockbridge, you’re in the midst of the iconic America he created. (Sunday morning at the Red Lion, drinking coffee on the porch, reading the Sunday Times, after the show is done, is pretty great, too.) And then too, my wife has told me so much about her student days at Tanglewood, when she was a young violinist, so the place is imbued with the joy of music and the spirit of Leonard Bernstein, who once conducted a student orchestra she played in and who was a powerful presence, almost godlike. Emmanuel Ax played on a PHC show at Tanglewood, so did the Juilliard String Quartet, so did other greats, and returning there, one remembers the spell they cast. Mostly, though, I love Tanglewood because the audience does. It’s their home more than it is mine, and it has powerful loving associations for them, as it does for my wife. After our show there in July, the audience kept clapping and clapping ---- we did a curtain call, and they kept clapping ---- so I walked out on stage, and it felt to me as if it wasn’t exactly a standing ovation, the crowd simply wanted to stay longer. They’d all mobbed down front up next to the stage and I started singing “Amazing Grace” with them and then a Pindar Family song from the Bahamas, “I Bid You Goodnight,” and the audience sang it so beautifully ----- “Goodnight, my dear mother, lay down and take your rest. Lay your head upon my Savior’s breast. I love you, but Jesus loves you the best, and I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.” ---- it was so sweet and pure, full harmony, a river of song, and I stood there on stage and cried. Tanglewood is a powerful place and the audience makes it so and maybe the ghost of Bernstein is still at work, too. Afterward, I stood outside in the dark for a couple hours saying goodnight to people and then zipped back to the Red Lion for a late supper, and sat on the porch with Inga Swearingen and my wife and her Boston nieces and talked into the night. I look forward to next time.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I need some unbiased advice. I turned eighteen last December, so this is my first chance to vote. Problem: I don't want to.

I'm an independent, so I have no party line to follow, and neither of the presidential candidates appeals to me personally. I'd rather leave it to people who at least think they know who ought to be in charge. Would that be so unpatriotic?

Thanks for the advice,
Jenn

Jenn,
Election Day is such a sweet day in America, I’d hate for you to miss out on it. After all the tumult and commercials and people yammering on the radio, that lovely Tuesday dawns and suddenly the country is intensely quiet. You go to your polling place and the election judges sit behind their long table and check off the names and accept your registration and everyone talks in whispers. All over the country, millions of your fellow citizens are deep in thought. It’s solemn and inspiring. You’re right that most people follow a party line and vote almost by reflex, but for many Americans, the walk to the polls is a soul-searching time. Think of how many men and women have died in the struggles to win this simple right to have a voice in selecting who will govern your country. Of course, democracy won’t perish simply because you and millions of others don’t cast a ballot. This year, I believe, the issues are so clear and important that voter turn-out will be high, especially if the race for president continues to be so tight. I just think you’re missing out on a big experience if you don’t stand in line and cast your ballot. It gives you a personal stake in what happens in the next four years. And of course it gives you the right to complain about politicians, which is a great pleasure in life.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
Prairie Home was a Saturday night tradition at my house. When I was little, I took my bath fast, so I could listen to your show. What were big traditions you remember growing up?

Elsbeth Shenk

Elsbeth,
On Saturday night we took baths, so we'd be nice and shiny for Sunday School. With six kids in the family it was a long process, and in the winter the house got nice and steamy. This was before daily bathing or showering was common. There was a radio show called The Sunset Valley Barn Dance that we used to listen to, hosted by David Stone, and I seem to recall “Gunsmoke,” starring William Conrad as Matt Dillon, which was very real and thrilling indeed. Our radio was a big floor-model Zenith, with pillars on either side of the cloth that covered the speakers. It was a luxury to lie on the living room floor and hear the opening theme song and let your mind drift away to Dodge City or Wistful Vista where Fibber McGee and Molly lived or whatever small-town auditorium the Barn Dance was broadcasting from. On Saturday nights, my dad's uncle Lew and aunt Ada often came to visit, and brought a box of sugar wafers, which was carefully divided among us, and we sat and ate our ration slowly, listening to Uncle Lew tell stories about growing up in Charles City, Iowa. He had a lovely husky voice and cleared his throat in a very articulate way, and we sat, freshly bathed, munching candy, until we were driven up to bed. The really good stories were told after we left, I'm sure. I lay in bed and thought about which verse I'd recite at Sunday School in the morning. You were supposed to choose a good long one and memorize it, and this performance in front of your aunts and uncles was an important ritual. It showed you weren't heathen and you weren't dim-witted either. And then I drifted off to sleep.

Post to the Host:
We went to see your show in sunny Ocean Grove. Was that you outside the Great Auditorium strolling through the crowd? There was a tall person, wearing a hat and dark glasses, that looked suspiciously like you. If that was you, do you always check out the crowd before broadcast time?

Janet

Janet,
I had supper before the show at a little lunchroom across the square from the Auditorium and then strolled through the crowd on my way back, but I don’t wear dark glasses and very seldom a hat. So it must have been some other guy, one even more suspicious. No, I don’t check out the audience beforehand, it would only make me feel terribly inadequate and depressed. I sit in the dressing room (which at Ocean Grove is small and comfy, with flowery wallpaper and wicker furniture, more like your Aunt Glady’s den than a dressing room, which by rights should be dim, windowless, with cinder-block walls and a concrete floor) and I stare at my notes and try to force them into my brain and I sometimes edit scripts and if I’m singing an original song, as I did at Ocean Grove, I’m pacing around singing it, trying to remember the melody and knowing I won’t. If you do the same show night after night after night, then you can mingle with the crowd, but a guy in my predicament has to bear down and focus.

Dear Garrison,
My name is Adam, I am 17, a student, living in London. Life seems so unpredictable to me. At the moment, the main topic on my mind has been death. I had never really come face to face with death before, and within this past month I have attended the funeral of my good friend's grandfather, and visited my own in hospital. I would call myself a Christian, but at the same time I have human thoughts and emotions about death. My mother tells me sometimes God's message isn't always clear, but we should look for it in those we love and look up to. Could you help me to understand this fear of mine? Best regards and prayers,

Adam

Adam,
What we have to fear in behalf of 17-year-olds is that feeling of flatness and despair, depression, emptiness, that may hide under the cover of detached coolness and that can set off self-destructive behavior, binge drinking, the whole panoply of dismal unhappy-making pharmaceuticals, suicide. What you are feeling, the fear of death, is sort of the opposite of that, and is a result of your heightened sense of life. The knowledge of the beauty of this world is intense in you. Your eyes are open, all your senses, the power of the mystery ----- maybe as it was for me a few years ago the night my daughter was born and I held her, a little six-pound creature, bright dark eyes, tiny fingers and legs moving, and afterward I walked around Manhattan in a terrifically heightened state of awareness, every block and every corner showed me some amazing thing, I looked into every human face with intense wonder. And I was terrified of death at that moment, hers, my wife’s, my own. With the feeling of great blessing comes the fear of it being taken away. You can pray for peace and understanding, you can read the Scriptures for insight into these things, but try to push yourself to live life fully and proceed confidently in the direction of your dreams ---- pursue the truth and put yourself in the presence of beauty --- and when death comes near, you won’t feel fear entirely, you’ll also feel gratitude for your good life. Thanks for prompting me to think about this.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Have you heard any of AirAmerica Radio? Is there a possibility of your being a guest on any of their shows?

Joe Adams
Hillsdale, NJ

Joe,
I just did the Al Franken Show on AirAmerica when I was in Boston for the Democratic National Convention. I was walking along the concourse of the Fleet Center which is about as hospitable as any other concrete-based arena and heard my name called in a pitiful voice and looked and there was Franken, headphones like a C-clamp on his head, looking up at me from behind a microphone like a basset locked in a car. He was on the air and trying to talk and take calls and manage a laptop computer and was missing a guest, so I sat down and talked to him for awhile, shared some recipes for chili and beer batter and various macaroni dishes, reminisced about Minnesota, and when I had to get up and go, he practically wept into his chamomile tea. I warned Al against radio. He was a big TV and movie star and best-selling author, and someone sold him on the idea that there needed to be a liberal talk radio network to compete with Limbaugh. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Radio is a salt mine. It's heavy lifting day in and day out. It's ErrAmerica in my book. I think liberals are supposed to have fun, ride their bikes, enjoy their Pouilly-Fuisse and cucumber sandwiches, read the Guardian, and argue in small querulous voices about trivial things. Let the rug-chewers have radio and let us spend our time outdoors in the garden.

Dear Garrison,
We are Danish immigrants who have lived in the US for 6 years without attending church once but now we are in the process of adopting a child, and would like to bring the child up in the Lutheran faith. We are looking for an open, tolerant and liberal environment. Which should we choose: The LCMS, WELS or ELCA arm of the Lutheran church? Each faction has a church in our town, but not knowing the background of each makes it a very difficult choice. The LCMS church is an A-frame, which appeals to us from an architectural point of view, but one shouldn't make decisions based on that alone.

Iben and Jens

Goddag, mine danskere!
I wish I had Danish vowels on this keyboard, the O with the slash through it, the A with the halo, and I'd answer your question in Danish and not upset the American reader. Missouri Synod Lutheran? Nej nej! The LCMS is about as open, tolerant, and liberal as the U.S. Marines or the Juilliard String Quartet, if you get my drift. Maybe you just imagine you're Lutheran and really, in your heart of hearts, you're Unitarian. There's a big controversy in the Danish Folk Church right now over a pastor in the little town of Taarbeck who denies the Trinity and says Jesus was not divine. His problem is that he's Unitarian, trying to be Lutheran. Which is like trying to play golf with a tennis racquet. Anyway, my advice is to visit each of the Lutheran churches in turn and try out the preaching and make sure the organist doesn't play too loud and decide who's really friendly and who's just trying to be. And then, if you're not sure, broaden your search to include the Episcopalians, the Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and so on and so forth. But bringing up your child in church is a good idea. Just make sure you take the child, don't send it. And if you want a real adventure, volunteer to teach Sunday School.

Hi Garrison --
I grew up in your neck of the woods and now I live in Portland, Oregon, and I know things have changed since I was a kid, but I'm curious about those roses you talk about. I remember scrawny little roses we had growing alongside our garage. We've got really really big roses out here and also a rose festival.

Gail

Gail,
The roses in the Midwest are not scrawny. Maybe yours were planted too close to the garage and got shaded or maybe the ground was soaked with motor oil. We have climbing roses in our backyard that are a joy to look at and I feel they would compare favorably with any roses that Portland could offer. And I'm no rose grower. I just throw some coffee grounds on them from time to time to stimulate growth and, boy, they are beauties. About the size of cereal bowls. Minnesota roses are hardier, and the cold stimulates bold vibrant colors and blooms that stay fresh for weeks and weeks. Frankly, I don't associate Portland with roses at all. It's where cement comes from, right? I don't mean to get huffy, but it really burns my bacon when people move away from Minnesota ----- usually in pursuit of a dream that never comes true, never could come true, and we could have told them that, but did they ask us? no they did not because they knew we'd tell them the truth ---- and in their bitterness at seeing the folly of their ways, they say deprecating things about the land and people who nourished them. Such as about their roses. Our roses are just fine. We have no need for a rose festival. We have better things with which to occupy our time, such as raising our children to be helpful and kind and not backbiters and nay-sayers, especially when it comes to other people's flowers.

Hi, Garrison --
On May 15 I was in hard labor with our first son, and about two hours before he was born I recall thinking, "Oh dear, I'm missing Garrison's monologue." Do you think this betrays misplaced priorities on my part? I should mention that I didn't have any pain medication, so I can't blame it on anesthesia.

Sarah

Sarah,
Odd you should mention it. On May 15, during the show, I had a sudden thought, "I'm glad I'm doing the monologue and not experiencing waves of unbearable pain as strangers peer up into my crotch." I can't imagine what it's like to give birth and don't want to try. But my cousin who is an obstetrics nurse tells me that women in delivery are capable of going off their rockers (briefly) in surprising little ways ---- demure devout women coming out with bursts of wild profanity, for example. Your vagrant thought about Lake Wobegon was just a brief wistful urge to be somewhere else. And then you buckled down and with the help of your able husband telling you when to breathe and so forth, you brought forth your progeny. We'll just keep this a little secret between us.