Post to the Host:
What advice can you give to a guy who's lonely, depressed, anxious, insecure, and painfully shy? I'm 21 years old and never have had a girlfriend. Sometimes I feel fully unable to communicate with others adequately. It's not that I don't talk with others, I do. I'll joke around with people and even talk about interesting things like good books. But that doesn't seem to be adequate. I feel like I'm trapped in Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" longing to express myself but finding no words to do so.

Hopeless in Ohio
(would rather not have my name be used)

Dear Hopeless,
The phrase "lonely, depressed, anxious, insecure, and painfully shy" describes exactly how I felt for months when I lived in Copenhagen back in my mid 40s and it didn't help that it was winter and dark and rainy. The whole situation made me feel stupid, in addition to l.d.a.i.& p.s. I had a perfectly nice place to live and people who wanted to be my friends and yet it was a big struggle, day after day. One thing that helped was writing: I took time to walk around and look at things and write down what I saw, and everytime there was a social occasion I tried to write it down afterward and to get outside my own misery and describe the scene, the people, and who said what (as best I could, I was struggling with Danish at the time). This felt good, like I was making an attempt to get loose of the depression, and one attempt spawns another, and soon one is swimming. And isn't this what George Willard did in Winesburg — he observes and writes down his impressions and though he blunders through romance and feels deeply lonely and disconnected, people seem to look to him as a sympathetic listener and confide their stories in him. In just this way, your anxiety and insecurity and shyness comprise a sort of asset — instead of learning how to impersonate strength and confidence, you encounter people unarmed and though this is painful, it's better than being a bozo whose true self is hidden under a layer of cool. You don't want to overcome these painful feelings — they're a true source of strength — you simply don't want to be managed by them and live in a panic. I can't give you specific advice, not knowing what your situation is, but I do think you should keep talking to people, not letting your fears dominate you, and when you see someone you want to know better, make yourself do it. And don't beat up on yourself. Other 21-year-olds around you may not seem to share your insecurity, but they do, they really do.

Post to the Host:
Over the last few years I have been occasionally traveling to Port au Prince, Haiti. I have noted that on the drive up into the hills above Port au Prince, near the town of Petionville, there is a shop named "Kitty Boutique." Has Bertha gone international? Or is this perhaps an attempt by one of the locals to piggy-back off the fame of Bertha's shop? Should your lawyers be informed?

Thought you might want to know.

Jeff Coghill
Atlanta

Jeff, we've turned this over to the international desk of our legal department and if the Petionville interloper ventures to hang a Bertha over that "Kitty Boutique" we'll be on him like a cat.

Garrison,
Used to love the show, but the PC is a bit heavy. Was Lincoln a bi-sexual? Come on, Garrison...was it tongue in cheek or too much tongue? Lincoln was a God-fearing man, a person of integrity and honor. Is it necessary to cast mud in his direction in order to please a certain lobby or push an agenda?

You disappoint.

Arthur Turmel
Hertford, N.C.

Arthur, President Lincoln was a complicated man, melancholic, ambitious, a tower of strength, a smart politician, and a man whose gift of language has been ringing for a hundred and fifty years. What's so remarkable is how he continues to fascinate us, and if we're sufficiently curious to go back and read what he wrote and what others remembered about him, we may be surprised — by the vituperation directed at him, for one thing, including accusations of irreligiousness. Was he "God-fearing"? There are different opinions about that, both then and now. As for his sexual orientation, who knows? But there is a book out on the subject, as you undoubtedly know, so it's been in the news. I didn't realize that this was unmentionable. I will be careful not to refer to it in the future.

Hello Garrison —
These cold winter days make me yearn for warm weather and a time when we sat in a parking lot outside in St. Paul watching you do PHC. So many things, good and bad, have happened to all of us since then, I wonder if you even remember those old days of small audiences and fresh air. Would I ever be able to see you do another outdoor show?

Sioux Bescher
Clear Lake, IA

Sioux, I'm trying to remember an outdoor show done near a parking lot in St. Paul — could it have been the Como Park bandstand back in the late 70s? There's a big lot right next to it there on Lexington Avenue looking out over the lake. We did the show there because I have all sorts of pleasant memories of Como Park, the zoo, the softball fields where the Jack's Auto Repair team played and where Kevin Fitzpatrick, a poet and rightfielder, lifted some towering home runs, the sort that come crashing down in the infield of the adjacent diamond, startling the pitcher. And some of our Denham family picnics were held there too, so Como is associated in my mind with Aunt Elsie's potato salad and Aunt Ina's peanut-butter cookies and also frankfurters roasted over a fire on a stick, which is the only way to do hot dogs. Boiled dogs are nothing compared to dogs slightly charred and split open by direct contact with flame. I have no memory of the show we did at Como but I could reconstruct a family picnic for you in some detail. We do outdoor shows — we'll do the State Fair again in September and we do quite a few on the road — and maybe we should consider doing one in a parking lot. You could hear the show on your car radio and bring your own food and drink and during the slow parts you could tilt your seat back and snooze. And if the host said something untoward, you could honk at him — you could express show rage.

Post to the Host:
I like the ditty at the end of the Ketchup Advisory Board segments, so I wrote one:

These are the good years,
We're planning lots of trips.
Our condo has cable,
Our friends all have new hips.
Life's like ketchup
On my fish & chips.

Betsy Ellis
Apple Valley, MN.

Bravo, Betsy. You have a knack for writing tercets. It's like a lot of knacks in that it has no practical application, but there it is and it's good to use it now and then. Writing the occasional tercet (or couplet or quatrain) helps to occupy your mind on those long trips or while recuperating from hip surgery, it creates no waste by-products other than a sheet of used paper, and it can amuse other people — for example, by making them think of fish and chips as they come out of the anesthesia or as they come out of Iowa. And thanks for that.

Post to the Host:
On the February 12 show, your guests included a quartet from the Minnesota Orchestra, which was great. You kept talking about how they had to "go to work" shortly, i.e., rush off to their 8 pm concert in Minneapolis. Actually, I had been to the Orchestra on Thursday night, and heard an astounding performance of the Nielsen Symphony No. 5. That piece is not often played, and is among the masterpieces of the 20th century. When you bid farewell to the string players, I thought to myself, "I should go hear the Nielsen a second time, because it may never come my way again." I almost got in my car and drove over to Minneapolis, but then double-checked my Orchestra schedule. Hmmm. No concert on Saturday night.

So what gives? Just taking a little artistic license to make some conversation with the musicians? But why?

A Perplexed Listener in St. Paul

Dear Perplexed, I was told that the musicians had a concert that night, so they could only stay through the beginning of the monologue. And in fact, as I began the monologue, I watched them packing up to leave. Earlier, talking with them on the show, asking about their concert, I got the impression that it was a preview of the upcoming season, but maybe I misunderstood. In any case, it was a gorgeous quartet and what a pleasure to sing duets with Prudence Johnson with the quartet accompanying. I hope they return on the 26th.

Post to the Host:
We love the show very much and have enjoyed it in person as well (in NYC). However, we were listening the other day and you mentioned that Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln had lost four sons in childbirth. That is not accurate!

They did have four sons:

Edward — died in infancy (not childbirth).
Willie — died in 1862 (12 years old).
Thomas "Tad" — died in 1871 (17 years old).
The oldest son, Robert Todd, was born in 1843 and died in 1926 (at 82 years old).

Nancy Price
Hackensack, N.J.

Nancy, I don't recall saying that but on the odd chance that I did, am glad to be corrected. It's nerve-racking doing this show and occasionally, under the intense pressure, one speaks untruths. In private life, I am honest as the day is long, which, in early February, is not as long as it could be, but that's another matter.

Hello Garrison:
My fiancé (Johanna) and I are very excited to be going on the Prairie Home Companion cruise in August from Boston to the Atlantic provinces — I've listened to the show since I was a teenager — and we both thought it would be nice to perhaps get married on board the ship, since we are hoping to "tie the knot" sometime this year. Jokingly, Johanna said why don't you see if Garrison could marry us since I've been a devoted fan for more than 25 years. "Yeah, right," I responded. Any thoughts you have would be appreciated.

Don Cadoret
Tiverton, R.I.

Don, the cruise in August will have a fully-accredited Lutheran minister aboard and if you want to get married, he'd be the man to speak to. Pastor Westphal is experienced and he'd get through the ceremony gracefully and in short order and his brief homily would be to the point. Of course he needs to know who he's marrying — he's not a vending machine — and that takes time and I don't know if Lutheran ministers do pre-nuptial counseling by e-mail or not. He would probably counsel you to have your wedding in the company of friends and family, so that the people you will depend on in time of trouble can also share in your joy. It only makes sense. A ship at sea is a romantic idea for a wedding, I'm sure, but a Lutheran minister is going to advise you to be practical. It's just his nature. Plus which the cruise will be heavily populated by Republicans from the deep South. That's why the cruise sold out so quickly. Wealthy right-wingers bought up almost all the cabins so that they could have seven days in which to pay me back for little remarks I've made on the show. If they are the ones you want at your wedding, well, there they are.

Post to the Host:
I'm a freshman at a private school in NYC and am on the wrestling team. This Wednesday we are wrestling a team from a Lutheran school. I was wondering whether you could give me any advise for the match, maybe some secrets you know about beating Lutherans. Thanks a lot.

Will Holland
New York City

Will, you're going to want to work up some real lunatic ferocity — foaming at the mouth, eyes flashing, nostrils flaring, and so forth — and come out at the opening whistle and strike hard and low — come hurtling at him at ankle height while letting out a shriek and drop him like a sack of potatoes while he is still going into his crouch — and throw yourself across his shoulders with one knee on his windpipe and pin him. Wham. Lutherans are not known for swiftness or ferocity — they take awhile to warm up their sense of righteousness to the point of anger. Sudden inexplicable violence is almost always a good tactic against them. After you humiliate this guy, though, he is going to shake your hand and congratulate you — and really mean it — and you're going to feel like a complete jerk. So be ready for waves of self-loathing afterward.

Garrison:
As many years as I have listened to your show, I have yet to hear a single barbershop group. With as much acapella music as you and the Hopeful Gospel Quartet perform, surely you have a love for good, old-fashioned Barbershop.

Bryan Fantoni
Louisville

Bryan: You're right, we've neglected barbershop. We've had four or five groups on, but it's been years. Last fall I was on a plane and a woman handed me a CD of her Sweet Adelines chorus from New Jersey and they were phenomenal. Something chilling and trembly when forty ladies hit that flatted seventh (or whatever the money chord is) and knock it out of the park. I will strive to pursue this matter, Bryan, and if I continue to be neglectful, don't hesitate to write again with a little more ferocity.

Garrison,
Up here in Fargo, it's twenty-five below and I am trying to look on the bright side.

1. When it's this cold, you can't feel the shock from an electric fence. Of course, the cows can't either, so that might be a down side.

2. You can't feel yourself getting cut when your freezing cold, AND you won't bleed to death either because the blood freezes. I had a friend in grade school who came in after an afternoon of playing with us in the freezing cold and found she had ripped her snowpants going over a barbed wire fence. She had cut her thigh 4" deep and 13" long and didn't even feel it. My mom just put a dishtowel full of snow on it to keep it from thawing and drove her to town to get stitches. My friend was happy that her mom didn't even care about the torn snowpants, the stitches in her leg were that impressive. Maybe that's how they first discovered local anesthesia — I don't know. I also had a great uncle who was running a high fever and the family thought he had died so they put him out in the shed. The cold brought down his fever and he came walking back into the house 4 hours later ... wondering what the heck he was doing in the shed.

Bye,
Alice Barefoot

Alice, the story about the playmate leaves me feeling slightly faint, but the resurrection story is beautiful and I am going to remember it and use it someday. Those ancestors of yours certainly must have had a matter-of-fact view of death to stick the body out in the shed so promptly. Or maybe they didn't care for that great-uncle so much and the thought of his demise was not entirely unpleasant to them.

Dear Host —
How about a spoiler alert before blowing the surprise endings of films? I sorta wanted to see "Million Dollar Baby" and make up my own mind. Sorry you didn't like it, but everybody has their own likes and dislikes.

Bad Host! Bad Host!

Anne Foster
Post, N.Y.

Anne, I don't apologize. Sometimes we have to intervene and keep the people we love from walking into a ditch. So we erect a barrier. We put up a sign: Beware Of Dog. We don't let people experience the shock and awe of meeting the dog unexpectedly. When Hillary Swank walked away from the evil boxer after the bell and the boxer walked over and whaled on her and she fell and hit her head on the stool and became a quadriplegic, it was so utterly wrong, wrong, wrong. First of all, the evil boxer was wrong, and then the foul was blatant beyond belief, and then the stool was conveniently in the right spot to snap Miss Swank's neck. Sorry, but it's just bad writing. The story makes no sense. Not my fault. It's a huge cheat. The writer had a good story going and then he decided to switch over to mythology. That's my opinion. If you want to see a great tragedy, catch "Hamlet". He dies in the end, and so does Laertes, and Gertrude, and Ophelia, and knowing this will not really detract from your pleasure. You will be fully engrossed.

Mr. Keillor —
In a recent PHC promo you listed those appearing on the upcoming show: "...Sue Scott, Tom Keith and myself." Goodness me, I should hope that your 'self' will be there in attendance with 'you'.

Yours faithfully,
David Briscoe

David, you've caught me, out in public with mismatching socks, and I will resolve to do better.

Dear Garrison,
I so enjoy your show and especially your irreverence. I was particularly pleased last weekend to hear you make fun of The Aviator. I hated it. I thought it was sophomoric and superficial in terms of Hughes's personality and mental illness (and ignoring of his probable drug addiction) and disrespectful of such strong figures as Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn. I also love the stuff you do about institutionalized religion at its worst.

Thanks for being there,
Vivien Wolsk, NYC

Vivien, you and me both. The script had a committee feel about it and Leonardo diCaprio did not look like anybody capable of flying a plane, and about an hour into it I started to look at my watch. But wasn't Alan Alda terrific as a corrupt senator? The other night I saw an even worse movie, Million-Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood, which is the pointless downer of the year. Clint was his usual two-dimensional self but Morgan Freeman was classy and sweet. And Hillary Swank was so good right up to the point the screenwriter made her a quadriplegic and suddenly every bit of life went out of the movie. A painful wrong turn. It's a movie that leaves you with nothing but emptiness and grief and it takes a long time to forget. I think I'll write a boxing story for the show this week — let Tom Keith do those socks and pows and krrrrrrracks.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
I was excited on January 22 when you commented on the -54 degrees in Embarrass MN but very disappointed to hear you say that Embarrass also held the state low record of -60. Tower MN holds that record. Tower is just 10 miles from Embarrass and there is quite the competition between these two towns for the low temperature. Tower (pop. 400) needs to hold on to its claim to fame. I am from Tower and have a cabin on Lake Vermillion and I depend on you to help our little town keep in the news with its state-record low temp.

With warm regards,
Pauline Housenga

Pauline, I apologize for the mistake, and if you want to tell people that you are embarrassed to listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" because the ignorance of the host is simply towering, I would forgive you. My face is vermillion.