Dear Mr. GK,
I'm looking forward to your upcoming movie with Robert Altman. Yet, I was disappointed not to see Tim, Tom, Fred, Rich, Pat and Sue listed in the IMDB.com update. Sure, we all like watching Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. But we'll get to see the APHC regulars, won't we?

Ehrick Long
NY, NY

I hope so, Ehrick, but who am I? Just the writer of the screenplay, an ink-stained wretch, and if Altman needs my advice, he hasn't asked for it yet. He's a hard-charging, cigar chomping, phones a-ringing, Take-A-Memo-Miss-Arthur type of movie tycoon who paces in his Manhattan aerie and snaps at subordinates and bends powerful men to do his bidding. Think of Jason Robards as played by Broderick Crawford and that's Altman. I met with him Thursday and he did the talking and I did the listening. I still have a bruise on my chest where he poked me with his right index finger as he said, "The whole second act is wrong, wrong, wrong. We're not paying you by the word, you know. Too much English major stuff. Kill the limpid small talk and the introspective anguish and give me a sleek man in a beautiful tan suit who pets a cat on his lap as he issues orders for dastardly deeds. And a scene where a blonde opens a door and yells, 'Where's the chow, baby? Mama needs a roast beef sandwich.'" And then he's taking a call from George Clooney who wants to play Buddy in a remake of "Intruder in the Dust". I'm standing there in my pink shirt and chinos and black dress shoes and Sears sportcoat, a little self-conscious about my socks (pink with seahorses) and my hair (should I have used the aloe gel?) and more than a little aware of the fact that I'm from Anoka, Minnesota, and the graduate of a land-grant university. So when exactly should I pluck up my courage and say, "Um, what would you think about maybe using some friends of mine in your movie?" — I'm waiting for the right moment. I am only the writer, I am not David O. Selznick. I do know for a fact that Kenneth Branagh will be playing me, so there's one PHC regular you won't be seeing on the silver screen.

Dear Garrison,
I was in Minneapolis last weekend, and in the airport I saw a local wearing a t-shirt and shorts; it was 14 degrees F. out; in the van to Rochester, another man was clad in a short-sleeve summer shirt. Were they vestigial remnants of Venturaism, or harbingers of a new "no brain, no pain" movement for your state? Also, I saw in the airport large signs for "authentic Mexican food"; a long way to travel for chimichanga. But in vain I searched for a lutefisk stand. Having just eaten (and enjoyed) haggis in Scotland in August, I was prepared to sample some of your local fare, but alas it was not to be. Can you give me some insight into these features of Minnesota living?

Sincerely yours
Paul D. Holland, S.J.

Father Paul, the person in t-shirt and shorts was an exhibitionist making a bid for attention, same as you'd find in any part of the country, but here in Minnesota it takes less effort. In New York, you'd need to have your torso covered with tattoos and carry a boa constrictor on your shoulders and dye your mohawk bright green to get the sort of attention that shorts in March will get you in Minneapolis. Exhibitionism is a branch of the show biz, which I'm in, so I wouldn't characterize them as "no brain, no pain" — I think of it as a sharing of one's self. As for lutefisk, it is not a convenience food that can be prepared in advance: it must be eaten in its proper context, in a church basement, in December. The haggis you ate in Scotland was probably not very good, Father — I hate to say this, but it's true, according to Scots I know: there is tourist haggis and then there is the real stuff that your old aunt might make. We spared you the experience of eating tourist lutefisk and you should thank us for that. As for Mexican food, we enjoy it in Minnesota, authentic or not, because it's peasant food and that's who we are down deep. It's an excuse to eat beans, cheese, ground beef, tomato sauce, under an exotic label. Hot dish tastes even better when you call it an enchilada. Come back again around Labor Day, Father, and come to the Minnesota State Fair and you'll find a culinary experience not available at the airport. Three words, Father: deep-fried cheese curds. And three more words: fresh sweet corn. With a bag of curds in one hand and an ear of corn in the other, you will be a very happy man. Praise the Lord.

Post to the Host:
Hi. Earlier today, I was listening to the rerun of the 11/1/03 show and I really liked Adam Granger's song "Mr. and Mrs. Jones." I went to look him up on your website to see if he had a CD and lo, he wasn't even listed as a participant. A site search revealed that he had sung that tune on a broadcast the previous May. His performance and Howard Levy's rendition of "Bei mir bist du schoen" seemed to have been spliced into the tape of the later show. What gives? (Not a complaint, just curious.)

Andy Moore
Brookline, MA

We edit the reruns around here now, Andy. We used to recycle them as is but I decided that one should never pass up an opportunity to make improvements and so I told Scott Rivard, our technical director, who produces the reruns, to cut out the topical stuff and the sketches that tanked and the monologues that misfired and replace them with quality goods like the songs you mentioned. Scott is more the purist than I, but he went along with this. There were a lot of good shows in which I poked fun at a man who was governor of Minnesota at the time, and now he's out of office and who cares? So we snip out a few minutes here and a few minutes there and stick in "Bei mir bist du schoen" and make a good show even better. Nobody notices because Rivard is a great editor. Nobody except obsessive pedants and Webheads and also fine people like you, Andy.

Post to the Host:
As a devout listener, I'm curious about the Catchup Advisory Board. Does this moniker stem from cleverness, or is it simply the result of spelling-challenged individuals?

Rhonda

Rhonda, there are a number of ways to spell ketchup, including catsup and catchup, and the Catchup Advisory Board thought that catchup is closer to the way we actually say catsup than ketchup is.

Hello Mr. Keillor.
I have been listening to your show for quite some time now and love every minute of it. In fact... your show has been great in helping me
bond with my father: we listened to it while sipping hot chocolate. Anyhoo, on to my question. I am getting married this August. Do you have any advice?

Michael Carlisle
Pendleton, SC

Michael, you have come to the right person. I have more experience with marriage than almost anybody else. In general, the rules for marriage are similar to the rules for being in a lifeboat on the open ocean: don't crowd each other, no sudden moves, and keep all disastrous thoughts to yourself. Beyond that, I advise against long discussions about the Relationship — in fact, don't ever use the word "relationship" and you'll be ahead of the game. A relationship is what exists between fruit trees; what you and your beloved have is a hot romance and it is your job, Michael, to keep that romance hot, or at least toasty warm, and you do this by being faithful and avoiding the monster of jealousy, especially jealousy of the past, and also by using your imagination. And by not discussing the Relationship.

Avoid arguments about money. Be generous.

I know a couple in Florida, two of my Republican friends, who for thirty-five years have asked each other every day, "What do you need from me today?" and feel that this habit has kept them on track.

But you do need to stick up for yourself. Some men make the mistake of being passive in the name of love, thinking to avoid conflict, and so they say "Yes, dear" about twenty-two thousand times and one morning they wake up and realize they are living someone else's life and not their own, and they blow up the lifeboat. So if you like to go shoot small defenseless creatures, and she doesn't like it, but you need to do it, then go do it.

Michael, I have plenty of advice. Put another nickel in and you'll get more.

Post to the Host:
I grew up on public radio, living in the woods with no electricity or running water, listening to you on a battery operated radio. Somehow I managed to reach the ripe old age of 25 before learning that Lake Wobegon wasn't a real place. All those years I had pictured you in my imagination as tall and bearded and then I saw your picture and something in my heart broke. But I got over it. Now at 28 I am a first time mother and I'm looking forward to sharing APHC with my son and his generation. So thank you for all the years.

Amelia Stiles
Scott AFB
Illinois

Amelia, it's good of you to write and congratulations on that little boy. Twenty-eight is a good age at which to beget your first-born. You're wiser and have some idea who you are and you're young enough to endure the sleep deprivation. This is what kills us geezer parents, the interrupted sleep that turns us into the walking dead and makes us forget where we put our car keys, not to mention our car. Just don't be one of those all consuming parents of the sort we see more and more of today, the kind who put headphones on the mama's belly so the fetus can hear Mozart and wave flash cards at the little tykes as they eat their soy cereal. Don't get swallowed up in parenting. Don't bother reading the books. Be loving and kind and let your boy be challenged and you make sure to have a good life yourself. As for the beard, I grew it for years and then it wore me out and I shaved it off. I can send you a picture of me with one, if that's a comfort to you.

Post to the Host:
I was overjoyed to find your ode to premature infants in a preemie book for new parents. Our son (a former 26 week preemie) will turn two at the end of March. So I'm including the poem in gifts as we celebrate our son's "graduation" from the preemie label. Our struggles continued for a year after release from the NICU in Minneapolis. Our son needed a tracheotomy to breath for the first year and a half of his life. After major throat reconstruction, he is now a walking, talking, one-man demolition crew.

When I first saw you, kid, you were tiny and thin
And slimy and red and your head was mooshed in.
I said to your mother, "He looks kind of sloppy,
And a pound fifteen ounces ain't that big for a crappie."

But something about you, the look in your eyes,
Said you fully intended to grow to full size.
They slapped your backside and you let out a cry,
And I said, "We will keep him, at least we shall try."

Some babies are born in nine months, by the clock,
Some babies are born, and they sit up and talk.
Some babies are born and no doctor is there,
But some babies come in on a wing and a prayer.

Poor little fetus as big as my hand.
Poor little fish thrown up on dry land.
Who came in late March though you had till July,
Too small to live and too precious to die.

They shipped you across to the big Neonatal
Intensive Care Unit's computerized cradle.
And attached you to wires and stuck you with tubes
Monitored closely by digital cubes.

And thanks to the latest neonatal therapeusis
And regular basting with greases from gooses
And your Mama's milk intravenously fed
You did not fade away, you grew up instead.

We'll always remember the months that you spent
With tubes everywhere and hooked up to the vent
And the trach in your neck, the wires attached,
Sweet little baby only half hatched.

I'll always remember each doctor and nurse in
The NICU who helped make you a person.
The kid who crash-landed, was carried away,
Survived, and turns two years old today.

Thanks for writing it.
Nate

Nate, hearing a story like yours makes any parent's heart turn flip-flops, imagining the wild emotional ride it took you on. My son had a rough arrival in the world, a forceps delivery, back in 1969 and was shipped to NICU and fed intravenously for a few days through a tube inserted in the top of his skull. To protect it, the nurses taped a Dixie cup to his head, which made him look like a tiny Shriner. When I had my heart operation four years ago, there was a pediatric cardiac surgery ward on my floor, and on my first walk after surgery, I walked down that hallway and had to turn around and walk back. It just was overwhelming to think about the suffering of children. This is why people go into the comedy biz: nobody bleeds.

Dear Garrison Keillor,
My dear mother was raised in Minnesota and came to Chicago for employment during the Great Depression. She always talked of her Finnish community, which sounded to me like another country. Indeed, whenever a Republican was elected to the White House, she would threaten to leave the United States and go back to Minnesota! My dear late mother also told me about the great St. Urho and I have researched the archives of your radio program for past celebrations of St. Urho's Day on March 16th. Alas! I have found none!!! Don't you admire St. Urho? My mom hinted that Minnesota Swedes, Norweigians, and Finns did not always see eye to eye. Is there some anti-Finn feeling in Lake Wobegon?

Sincerely,
Ruth Kardaras
Chicago

Ruth, I am not anti-Finn — in fact, I attended a big Finn Fest a year or so ago and recited "The Finn Who Would Not Take A Sauna" to about 5000 of them and enjoyed that. It gave me a chance to study Finns a little, though of course many of them had intermarried with other faiths and lost some of their genetic edge. Finns are not like us in some basic way that we keep trying to figure out. We are a German-Scandinavian culture here, which prizes order and selfless service and modesty, and the Finns are Slavic people and have a wild independent streak in them. They are not quite tamed. We admire this and we also fear it. At the moment, the Twin Cities is all enraptured with the Minnesota Orchestra's Finnish music director, Osmo Vanska, who is a self-effacing man (for a conductor) and also a very passionate musician. We can accept a Finnish conductor. When it comes to heart surgery, however, we might prefer a Swede or a Norwegian.

As for St. Urho's Day, I don't observe it for the same reason I don't observe St. Patrick's Day or Bastille Day — I don't belong to those clubs. Those days belong to other people, not me.

Dear Garrison,
I am 20, attending college in Washington, DC, studying for a degree in graphic design. However, my father has something negative to say about everything I want to do. He didn't want me to leave West Virginia, he criticizes me for forgetting my roots, and he doesn't think I can make a good graphic designer. Can you offer me any advice on how to not let my father's negativity bring me down?

Oh, and for an art project, I animated your penguins-on-an-iceberg joke in Flash. My professor loved it.

Carrie

Carrie, you're on your own, you've put some distance between you and your father, and now you have to learn how to listen to yourself and read your own mind and figure out what it is you want to do. Each of us has to do that every single day. Life is short and time is precious and we don't want to be just going through the motions. Whatever you do, do it with a whole heart, and if you can't bring the whole of you to it, then it's the wrong thing. And when you get your degree, come and design something for us. We've gotten dowdy. We need smartening up.

Garrison,
This is the first time EVER I have written a fan letter ... and I'm almost as old as you! Listening to your show is one of the best parts of my week. My favorite part is the News From Lake Wobegon. It's like listening to an inspiring sermon with a couple of good belly laughs. I also love the variety of music on your show, your guests as well as your incredibly talented guitarist and piano player. I also like the history lessons you give whenever you're on the road. Your show is a most impressive potpourri of Americana and deserves a Presidential medal, however unlikely it may be that you get one from the incumbent.

Now for the constructive criticism. I get some chuckles reading your compendium of jokes, but found one in the Religious section offensive, the one about Jesus and the nails. I noticed some statement therein that you put in whatever jokes people send. If that's the case, I think you should do some screening of them and particularly remove that one. By the way, I am a very liberal Episcopalian and not easily offended.

You are one of my heros and I am deeply chagrined that I missed out on the cruise with you from Boston to Nova Scotia — which is also where one of my ancestors from Scotland settled. Keep up the great work and doing what you do ... with the possible exception of the marriage-divorce-remarriage thing.

Ted Stronach
Concord MA

Ted, I agree with you that the joke is unfunny and I guess it's offensive. It was sent in to the website joke database by a fellow American and passed through whatever sieve we have in place — I don't know what that is. Probably a young person of libertarian bent who glances at them and eliminates only the worst stuff — which are probably rare, coming from public radio listeners: none of those kike and coon jokes that we grew up hearing old guys tell. And she allowed this one in — Jesus coming into an inn and setting three nails on the counter and asking the innkeeper, "Can you put me up for the night?" It doesn't do much for me, but maybe it thrills somebody else — some Baptist kid from a strict background who reads that joke and falls over laughing from the shock of it. The Forbidden is, as you know, a powerful propellant of jokes and the person who will be knocked over laughing by the nail joke is not likely an agnostic or a liberal but a kid who came up, as I did, through years of Bible study where he learned to say the right things and observe orthodoxy, and then, wham, a bad-taste joke about Jesus makes the kid laugh until cottage cheese comes out of his ears. Because he shouldn't laugh at it, he does. This is one of those little amazing things that make us human, I think. I'm not sure I'd want you to know the jokes that laid me low when I was 17, but there were some, they were wonderfully vulgar and tasteless, and they don't make me laugh now, but they did back then. I wouldn't want somebody to tell me those jokes on the radio, I'd be horrified if my uncles told them, but I do think they stretched one's mind.

As far as the joke you found offensive, I will try to remember to remove it from the website, but I don't have time to do this as a rule.

Glad you enjoy the show. You're the only focus group we have, you know — people who write in and say what they like. And it's an honor to have prompted you to write your first fan letter. I've written some to young writers and a few to Broadway stars, meant to write others and then didn't, figuring they must get bags and bags of mail, but it ain't necessarily so. I should write one to Ian Frazier who wrote a piece in the New Yorker a few weeks ago about Rev. Jerry Falwell that made me laugh out loud. I mean, Out Loud.

Mr. Keillor:
My husband and I love your show. We are part of a small theater group and wonder — have you ever thought of writing a play based on your characters? If so — since we are a small town theater group and your characters are from a small town — let us do your premiere.

Catharine Lockwood
DeRidder, La.

Catharine, how did you know? I've wanted to write a play for as long as I can remember and I've started writing one, based on a few chapters of a novel called "Wobegon Boy". I went sailing along for a few scenes and had a big time and then, when the going started to get tough, I found a way to start working on other stuff. I am a master of this. That's why I intend to become a weekly newspaper columnist, so I'll always have something to escape to and avoid doing what's hard. But I haven't given up on the play. And as for the premiere, I've promised a company in Chicago that they get a first look at it. Sorry. They didn't pay me any money or anything — just expressed interest, as you do — and I was so grateful I told them they could have it.

Hello Mr. Keillor,
As an 18-year-old about to graduate high school, I enjoy your program a great deal. What plans do you have to come to New Mexico? Well, I must go,

Quinten Peacock
Las Cruces NM

Quinten, I was in your state a couple days ago aboard Amtrak's crack Southwest Chief from Chicago to L.A. We stopped in Gallup and Lamy and Albuquerque where we got off the train and walked up and down the platform. We ate supper in the dining car, looking out at New Mexico, buttes and mesas in the sunset, thinking about the Sons of the Pioneers tune, "Riding Down The Canyon". Next time you have a few bucks to rub together, ride that train, son. It may not be around much longer.

Garrison Keillor,
I've been listening to your show for a long time. I recently heard a rumor that PHC was going off the air again. I heard that next year was your last. While I do disagree with your political view at times, I do agree with your show and I think it would be a shame to lose that from the airwaves. Of course, this could all be a silly rumor, but still, it would be nice to know.

Mike Setzler
Nemo, SD

Mike, I don't have any intention of stopping the show after next year. Of course your local station could drop it at any time, or Minnesota Public Radio could decide not to produce it, so who knows what might happen, but here at PHC we're marching forward with our heads high, enjoying the trip.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I love the radio show and look forward to listening every week, but my wife has no interest in it due to "a preponderence of dreaded bluegrass" and she thinks Guy Noir is "dopey." Nonetheless, she is a fine mother to my children and her employer has the good health insurance. If I listen alone in the bedroom I'm considered antisocial and if I try listening in the family room I get the skunk-eye.

Any advice will be carefully considered.

Mark Trail
Redwood Valley CA

Mark, your wife is a fine woman and able to make up her own mind about things and I would never presume to argue with her, nor should you, but a little disharmony can spark up a marriage and you shouldn't hesitate to walk around the house, smiling, tapping your foot, with a pair of headphones on, and let her see you enjoying yourself. A little mystery sparks up a marriage, too. Lovers can disagree on all sorts of things, and often do, and when they do, and still survive, they strike a blow for freedom in this great land. Freedom is not for the timid. Take cheerful pleasure in disagreement. Don't be cowed.

Post to the Host:
I've just begun listening to your show after a friend played his wife's "News from Lake Wobegon" tape during my visit to their house. It's a delight to find a show like yours on the air today, although I fear most people in my age group (I'm 25) just miss the whole point. Listening to APHC makes me feel counter-cultural, in an odd and ironic sort of way; I tell them about it and they back away slowly, probably to cleanse themselves with a dose of "American Idol."

But anyway. Is there any chance you'll come do a show or speaking engagement in or near North Carolina in the next year or two?

Hugh Fisher
Rockwell, N.C.

Hugh, the show is in Norfolk, VA on April 30 and Knoxville, TN on June 23, and that's as close as we come to North Carolina this year. As for 25-year-olds, we have quite a few in our listening audience, many of whom grew up in public-radio homes and listened to the show, some willingly, others not so, but I keep running into them whenever I go talk at colleges. Some bright shiny-faced person says, "Hi, I grew up listening to you." This can be jarring, since I, in my innermost recesses, feel that I am more 25-like now than when I was 25 when I was actually more 50ish, but it's okay to be jarred, and then I ask them about what they're up to and that's always interesting. Inevitably, they're more mature, poised, articulate, FUNNIER, than people that age used to be, and I envy them that, but sometimes they seem to envy me my having lived in the bad old days of the Sixties and come right out and say so — they got a whiff of the era from listening to the Beatles and Dylan and reading Hunter Thompson and the Beats and Ken Kesey, and maybe are slightly nostalgic about it, what you might call pre-life nostalgia, and that's sweet. I like meeting them. I enjoy being an uncle, though I neglected my own nieces and nephews dreadfully (because I worked all the time and did shows on Saturday so I even missed their weddings), so when there are people at the stage door after a show, I tend to deal swiftly and curtly with the geezers so as to have time to hang out with the kids. (That's you.) This is a cruel tendency on my part, to shove old ladies aside in order to mingle with youth and beauty, but there it is.

Dear Garrison,
Two of my life's goals were achieved this past weekend. I was able to meet a Playboy Playmate, Miss March 2005, from the St. Louis area. The next day I met my literary hero, Mr. Garrison Keillor. As a soon-to-be 30-year-old still single male, whose friends are all married with children, I find myself exploring all my interests and hobbies more than ever recently. I have not been an avid reader of Playboy, but on occasion, well, hey, I am a male and single and the articles sometimes are really well written. (God rest Dr. H. S. Thompson.) I heard on the local radio that Miss March 2005 was going to be signing autographs on Saturday afternoon at a local Harley Davidson shop. I made my way down there and stood in line for an hour with smelly old bikers and perverted teenagers. She was charming and cute. One word though: Airbrush! On my way home I tuned into my Saturday evening radio ritual, P.H.C. During one of the commercial breaks the announcer stated that you would be performing with the St. Louis Symphony on Sunday night. WOW! The performance was WONDERFUL! I didn't realize how tall you are!

Tyler Turner
St. Louis

You're a man of wide-ranging interests, Tyler, and that's good. A man shouldn't diminish his perspective by following a narrow path in life. You want to follow your nose and poke around in life's many interesting little corners. To read well-written articles AND listen to public radio AND to go out of your way to encourage a local girl who made good — all admirable. Yes, I am tall, compared to some people. But airbrushing isn't going to do much for me, Tyler. This is the face I got from walking into walls and I'll just have to live with it.

Dear Garrison,
In your show, I've noticed there are a number of songs you like to come back to (e.g., "Forever Young," "My Life," "The Cheapest Kind," anything by Buddy Holly). Is there a personal favorite that stands out from the rest? I assume "Little Drummer Boy" is at the bottom of the list.

Do you ever feel you're a singer trapped in a writer's body?

Rob Enslin
Syracuse, N.Y.

At the moment, I love singing duets with Prudence Johnson more than anything. Kate MacKenzie and I used to sing duets and then she got married and retired to Oregon and I haven't been able to convince her to come back to work. Prudence has a fine voice, very pure, and singing harmony to her melody makes a person feel graceful as Fred Astaire, even if the song is "Gold Watch & Chain" or "Before The Next Teardrop Falls" or "Devoted To You". It's awfully pleasurable, a guilty pleasure since she and I tend to fall into a pop style — Prudence isn't really at home in gospel music or bluegrass — but what can I say? I love it. I don't do Buddy Holly very well — I'm better at channeling Elvis. Any day I can sing gospel with Jearlyn Steele, "Precious Lord" or "Tramp On The Street" or "His Eye Is On The Sparrow," is a good day. On the Rhubarb Tour of 2003, I sang "Frankie and Johnny" every night for three weeks and loved that, and also "My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose," which is bits of Burns and Herrick and Yeats and Wordsworth and other poets. And then there have been the hundreds of renditions of "America the Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Home On The Range" and "Amazing Grace" and other songs with audiences. Some audiences bristle when you ask them to sing and that's okay, but now and then you catch people when they're in the mood for it. Tuesday night at the University of Nevada, Reno, I stood on the stage of the music hall and found that the beautiful acoustic that delivers the string quartet to the audience also delivers the audience to the guy on stage. They sang two verses of "O beautiful for spacious skies" in quiet four-part harmony that was so majestic, I saw people dabbing at their eyes. Well, that's how I feel when I sing harmony, too. This is one motive for doing the Prairie Home Companion cruise in August — we can gather in the ship's auditorium and sing for hours.

Dear Mr. Garrison,
Currently we are reading Lake Wobegon Days in our American Literature class at Carthage College (Kenosha, WI). First of all, I think that it is a great accomplishment to publish a book, let alone a book included on the reading list of an intuition of higher learning. If you could say one thing to the young adults currently reading your book, what would it be?

Lisa Sullivan

Lisa, my advice to them would be to skip the first fifty pages or so and to look up the long footnote and read that.

Post to the Host:
As a non-native Minnesotan, I have always been self-conscious about the way I pronounce the word AUNT, as I make it sound like the insect. In previous broadcasts, I have always heard you refer to his AWNTS, as many people in this part of the country do, but tonight you talked about ANTS. Anything Kafkaesque going on here, or just equal-time pronunciation?

Carol Roede
Rochester, MN

Oh my dear, that phrase "non-native Minnesotan" makes me feel that we native (but non-aboriginal) Minnesotans have been unwelcoming and sniffy about you and your accent — have we? I'm sorry if it's so. I love Minnesota but lived happily elsewhere for years and could again and make no apologies for it. One big reason for living here now is to afford my 7-year-old daughter the pleasure of being around her AUNTS. She has four of them in the vicinity. As to pronunciation, it maybe depends on the aunt. My aunt Ina was an awnt and aunt Elsie was an ant and one could go right down the list. As a theoretical thing, I'd probably say AWNTS but when it comes down to specifics, visualizing those ladies whomping up Thanksgiving or teaching Sunday School or sitting on the porch with a glass of green nectar, then they begin to seem more antly. Your awnt is a woman of high standards who expects you to toe the mark and your ant is charitable and funny and a little irreverent. An uncle, on the other hand, is always an uncle.