Dear Garrison-

I have enjoyed you for well over 20 years, and I listen to your monologues when I fly which helps prevent panic/anxiety attacks. My favorite is the one about Bruno the fishing dog. Will you be at Town Hall in New York City again in December, as you have the past few years?

Priscilla Witte

Priscilla,
I am going to try to remember not to do monologues in which people experience severe turbulence on flights. (I’m on a plane right now, from Seattle to Minneapolis, crossing the Rockies, and it’s very smooth, thank you.) Bruno, as you may know, was based on a real dog who lived in Red Wing, Minnesota, twenty years ago, whose owners had a bed & breakfast there. As for Town Hall, we will do four shows there in April, 2005, and we’ll spend December here in Minnesota. New York City is very festive at Christmas, but they don’t get enough snow for my taste, and I want to spend Christmas in good old St. Paul with my relatives.

Dear Garrison -
I started listening to your show when I worked at a Boy Scout camp near Oxford, Wisconsin. Now I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and my hope is you will visit our wonderful state in the near future. Any chance of that?

Jim Spevacek

Mr. Spevacek ---- The radio show has been to Albuquirky once and then the Hopeful Gospel Quartet did a benefit show for Sandia Prep School there, so we do know the way and surely one of these years we’ll make it back there. One (small) problem for me is that I have friends there who used to live up the street from me here in St. Paul. It was painful when they moved away, and it’s painful again whenever I see them, and what exacerbates the pain is that they REALLY LIKE living there in the high desert. It is true that I once moved away from Minnesota to live in New York, but I never told my friends that they could do likewise, and when you get to be my age, you just never get over these things. Your social skills have atrophied so that you’re unable to make new friends and so you bitterly resent it when the few friends you do have pick up and move away to Albuquerque and can’t stifle the urge to tell you how wonderful the place is. Anyway, you can see how complicated this is. Santa Fe, on the other hand, is a place where I don’t know a soul, so I’d be tickled pink to do a show there.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
A few years ago Architectural Digest featured a story about your home. One photo showed a prayer that you had had illuminated to hang above the fireplace in your dining room. I have a prayer by the German poet Richard Euringer that I have long wanted to have illuminated in similar manner for my kitchen. The time has come. I am wondering whether you could refer me to the artist who did the work for you. It's lovely.

Blessings and many thanks,
Elizabeth Felts
Pleasanton CA

Elizabeth, the prayer is not a wall hanging, it’s painted on the wall in gold leaf by a friend and cowboy guitarist named Jay Peterson. Jay is an old-fashioned sign painter who has done gold lettering for podiatrists’ office doors and retro murals and billboards and, for all I know, may have done the “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” signs that you see nailed to trees up around Lake Wobegon. He also did a picture of our daughter on the wall of our garage. (Jay lives in Maine: his e-mail address is signsong@earthlink.net) When Jenny and I bought our home, we noticed on the dining room wall a large 4x4 panel over the fireplace and decided to have Jay paint the table grace there, and when we sit down to dinner with guests, we like to sing it, to the tune of the Doxology. O Lord we thank Thee for this food, for every blessing, every good, for earthly sustenance and love bestowed on us from heaven above. Be present at our table, Lord. Be here and everywhere adored. Thy children bless and grant that we may feast in paradise with Thee.