Post to the Host
GK responds to queries on topics from childbearing to potato salad, with a little bookstore fetish in between.

Send your own post to the host.
Here's your chance to ask GK your most pressing questions—about the writing life, the radio life, Lake Wobegon, Guy Noir, whatever you like. Also, feel free to send feedback about the show. Honest comments and criticism are always welcome!

Post to the Host:
I am the mother of four and am intrigued by your daughter's name, and would like to know the story behind it. My children's names, in case you were wondering, are Victoria Caroline (I was a Victorian lit. major), Madeleine Alexandra (my mom is named Sandra), Jackson Peter (my grandmother's maiden name was Jackson) and William Henry (named for paternal grandfather but called "Liam"). Thank you for not naming your child Deadly Nightshade or Cookie or Wobegon. I hope she is suitably grateful when she is older.

Christine Barr
Paris TN

My little girl is named for her maternal great-grandmother, who was Swedish and whose nickname was Maia because she was born in May, and for my mother, Grace. I always thought that Grace was an elegant old name and it's nice to run into a few young Graces, including one in my daughter's class. Maia is not only found in Scandinavia but in Greece and India and probably other places too. She writes it with a nice flourish, in a big bold hand.

Dear Garrison.
I just finished your reading of "The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn." I was entranced by your voice and cadence and was very sorry that Mr. Twain didn't have more to say so you could continue reading; I was that drawn in by your storytelling. Will you be reading any more classic tales?

Pam Miller
Valencia, CA

Pam, I tried to do Huck Finn in something like a midwestern twang and follow Twain's great loping cadences and after recording the book (severely abridged in the latter chapters) I was all hot and wired-up about it and did a couple performances and then decided I didn't want to try to replace Hal Holbrook, and went back to Lake Wobegon. I am recording the Gospels at the moment and I'd love to do a set of classic pieces of American humor and also "Sister Carrie" sometime.

One recent bill before the NC state legislature has to do with bbq sauce. The state is divided against itself almost directly in half, the eastern portion eschewing catsup and the western half saying that without catsup it isn't sauce and without the sauce there is no bbq. This is a dilemma for Guy Noir. A visit from your crew may be necessary to unravel this earth-shattering problem. Is A Prairie Home Companion ever coming to Raleigh?

Jeanne Severin-Hansen
Knightdale, NC

I'm a Democrat and so divisiveness is something I'm familiar with and not perturbed by. And barbecue is important and worth a full and frank debate. I myself can enjoy either the ketchuppy sauce or the vinegary kind. You don't find the latter here in the Midwest, only the sweet kind, but a gang of North Carolinians drove up to S.D. for our Mitchell show in early May and barbecued a whole hog in the parking lot for us and their sauce was vinegary and people stood around and ate it until only a skeleton was left. I can't speak for the others but that sauce made me awfully happy. And the vegetarians among us dribbled the sauce onto their cole slaw and liked that. May many sauces flow. And I hope we make it to Raleigh soon.

Dear Garrison,
I am a 17-year-old fan of the show. I eagerly await your visit to my fair state this August. I've already purchased my ticket and I'm trying to have all of my friends come with me, with little success. I hate to be a downer, but I've had a morbid question for quite some time. You are getting along in years, and eventually, you will go on to meet the Creator, or become a cricket, whatever you believe. When that dark day comes, what will become of the show? Who will be the host? Is there a possibility that I could take the wheel? I've always wanted to host a variety show, and I believe I would do the show a good service by keeping it alive. I am serious beyond all measure. Ponder that, and let me know what you think. So long and see you in about 2 months!

Dmitri Rennac
Manchester NH

Dmitri, I don't know how you came to be pondering my demise, but when you do, you shouldn't think of it in terms of a career opportunity for yourself. I am in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in, but of course I could be struck by a truck any day, and meet the Creator, perhaps in cricket form, and at that point there is supposed to be grief on your part, a profound sense of loss, weeping, rending of garments. Only later, perhaps in 60 days or so, are you supposed to take over my job. And as you take it over, you're supposed to protest your unworthiness. This is how we do things in Minnesota. We don't sidle up to geezers and say, "When you kick the bucket, can I have those white shoes?" Be cool. Your time will come.

Post to the Host:
I am traveling from Arizona to Massachusetts to celebrate my prized grandson's Bar Mitzvah. We have tickets for our family for your show at Tanglewood on July 2...these Wil requested as one of his gifts to go see that "Guy Noir" guy. My query is, how do I submit a card so that my grandson, Wil, will be recognized on this show?

Coralee Edwards
Willcox, AZ

Coralee, bring the boy down to the stage during the intermission and hand him up to me. I'm the guy in the black suit and the red shoes. Put a sticker on Wil that says Wil and of course a yarmulke wouldn't hurt. I'll show the bar mitzvah boy to the crowd and we can all sing "For he is Coralee's grandson" to the tune of "For he's a jolly good fellow" and then I'll give him back. If he wanted, he could tell the joke about the bees who go to the bar mitzvah and wear yarmulkes so nobody will think they're wasps.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
The show in Cuyahoga Falls was GREAT, and I always enjoy seeing the shows live. Two friends and myself drove all the way up from Virginia to see the show, we were lucky in being able to land seats 12 rows back, and the three of us had a blast. I was able to get Richard Dworsky's autograph, which was very exciting, and I was going to get Fred's but a lot of people flocked around him. The only disappoint was at the end of the show, we were waiting outside in the VIP section to meet you, but were told you wouldn't be able to come out because you were feeling unwell due to the heat. I do hope you're feeling better. I myself realized that wearing a shirt and tie with a brown sports coat wasn't the best of ideas, especially with the humidity that day. I hope I can catch up with you one of these days. At any rate, I do have a question, I noticed that just before "Lives of the Cowboys" you put a hunk of something in your mouth, and I noticed you did this at the last show I saw just before the same section. What was it exactly you were "chewing" on? (Don't worry, if it was chewing tobacco you won't be letting me down, I myself am a pipe smoker!)

Aaron Tomlin
Madison Heights VA

Aaron, I apologize for not coming out to meet you. The problem wasn't heat, it was a bad back, and I didn't see how I could shake hands while lying prone on my back, so I just lay on the floor of the dressing room and enjoyed looking at the ceiling for an hour. I recommend this, by the way. The thing I stuck in my mouth was a wad of paper torn off a script. I can't play Lefty in "The Lives of the Cowboys" without a wad in my cheek to give him that laconic drawl.

Garrison,
This morning's edition of the New York Times declared The Joke dead. The consensus among comedians they interviewed was that joke-tellers are not welcome in their profession. As perhaps the sole remaining perpetuator of jokes, how does this make you feel? Isolated or important?

Charles Phipps
Columbia, SC

Mr. Phipps, to hear that the New York Times declares the joke to be dead is sort of a joke, like Jerry Falwell announcing that the sonnet is passé or Michael Jackson deciding that fly fishing is on the wane. When did we look to the Times for humor? The joke is firmly fixed in everyday grassroots American life and it never depended on professional comedians. Knock-knock jokes, for example. I never heard them on TV ever, but they're a lovely little genre, all about slightly off-kilter puns —

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Eskimo Christians.
Eskimo Christians who?
Eskimo Christians and I'll tell you no lies.

It's a small device for communicating a frisson of joyful pleasure from one person to another. The Times writer doesn't have a clue.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I now listen to your show with a full heart. My late mother and I spent many long car drives from Toledo to Ohio State Medical Center in Columbus listening to your CDs. Our favorite was the 25th Anniversary Collection. They were difficult drives, a mother trying desperately to survive leukemia, and a daughter savoring every moment, laugh and smile. I can remember a time when both of us laughed so hard while on the highway I considered pulling over. Oh, how that monstrous fart in the elevator nearly killed us! Mom was no longer able to read novels, and music on the radio seemed to make her nervous. But she was able to listen to Prairie Home Companion. She desperately clung to the CD jacket and would always tell me what story or song was coming on next.

Mom wasn't very good at storing her things. When she left for heaven I searched her drawers for those precious CDs. They fell out of the cases, but I found them. Unfortunately, they suffered scratches. I was sad to hear Iris Dement singing "Our Town," mom's favorite, suffering skips. Ah, well, I still love it, skips and all. There is good news though: Some of the CDs survived scratch-free. And now my children love listening to "grandma's stories and songs."

I was able to attend your monologue last year at Owens Community College. Although the sound was too low and my rear hurt from the folding chair, the smile wouldn't leave my face. Surely my mother would have gotten a kick out of you!

So here I am Mr. Keillor, tears at the ready, thanking you for the memories.

Donna Biddle
Toledo, Ohio

Dear Donna, I had forgotten all about that elevator story. It seems to me that it was based on experience and it took place at a medical clinic in Minneapolis. So if you and your mother listened to it as you drove to the medical center in Columbus, I guess that fart came full circle. I'm honored to think that I could make your mother laugh hard in the midst of a worrisome time and I will now think of her when thinking about the show. Sorry the show at Owens was uncomfortable.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I am in seventh grade at Ramsey Junior High School in St. Paul. I am doing a report on you and have a couple questions that I hope you can answer.

1. I have read some of your books (my personal favorite was Lake Wobegon Days) and I also listen to your show a lot. Which do you prefer? Doing shows? Or writing books?

2. Where do you get your ideas for all your stories and news from Lake Wobegon and everything?

3. I am into cars and I was wondering, what kind of car do you drive?

If you could answer a couple of these questions that would be great. It's really cool to have somebody from my hometown be, like, world famous. My family almost got tickets to one of your shows in Dublin, when we were in Ireland, but they were all sold out. That's a testament to how famous and popular you are, but anyway. If you could answer some of these questions, that would be great.

Sincerely,
John Mattessich

John, you're very polite and kind, as we expect St. Paulites to be, but selling out a show in Dublin is no big trick — you just hire a very small hall and give away half the tickets and sell the rest for half-price. Anybody can do it. And you feature (1) a talking dog, (2) scantily clad women wrestling in a mud pit, and (3) a yodeller, and you're home free. If you had gotten in to see the show, you would know this.

As for your questions (all good) — (1) I'd prefer to stay home and write books, which is a really wonderful life, the sort you dream about when you're in the 7th grade — you get out of bed around noon, lounge around, shoot pool, eat lunch, make some phone calls, work for half an hour, close up shop, and go hang out with your friends. The problem is that I'm lazy and I need that regular deadline to get me motivated. The radio show goes on the air at 5 p.m. (Central) on Saturday and by 4 p.m. I am a very busy guy, believe me. My mind is racing a mile a minute. Without that clock, and the terror it induces, I would do approximately no work at all and have to go live with my mother who is 89 and no longer interested in cooking for me and doing my laundry. (2) I get my ideas from sheer necessity. I sit and look out the window and hours go by and no ideas come and then it dawns on me — it's Friday, I have a show on Saturday — and now I see a tall man with a derringer crouching behind a cactus, a springer spaniel named Derek panting softly, and there's the smell of Spam frying and faraway a piano playing "Memories" and a guy named Dutch and a waitress with a red bandanna and slowly a story starts to take shape. (3) I drive a Saab station wagon but this is not my choice. I want a red convertible, either a Mustang or an Audi. But my wife will not allow this, on the grounds that it's dangerous, and so I'm stuck in this sensible car. She grants me a good deal of freedom in other areas, such as foreign policy, but she has firm opinions about cars and will not budge. Once, on a spring night when I was in 11th grade, my girlfriend Corinne Guntzel drove me home from Anoka along the West River Road in her father's brand-new white 1958 Cadillac convertible. He was a plumber but he owned a Caddie convertible. It was a beautiful night and I stood up in the front seat, my hands on the windshield, and I sang — something like "Til There Was You" — with the wind in my face, and I don't know why we didn't race south to the Iowa border and marry that night. Probably because I didn't suggest it, for fear she'd say no. Two years later, my friend Larry Leventhal let me drive his purple Pontiac convertible, a real classic. It steered like a big boat and we drove around St. Paul late one night, but without girls, so what was the point of it? I rented a convertible once in L.A. and that was cool, but I feel like it's time to own one of my own. (Maybe I could keep it at your house...)

Dear Garrison,
I just saw John Prine perform in a venue worthy of his stature—the beautiful Arlene Schnitzer Performance Hall here in Portland. He tells wonderful stories in his songs, and I thought, "He should be on A Prairie Home Companion!"

Anyway I hope you will consider the great John Prine as a guest (I realize you may have had him on before and I just missed it).

Caroline Petrich
Portland, OR

Caroline, I'm glad to hear that the author of "Paradise" and "Dear Abby" and "Hello In There" is out doing good shows, and glad he got to play the Schnitzer and (I suppose) stay at the Heathman Hotel next to it, which is a grand place. The rooms feel elegant and homey and the restaurant is superb and has an excellent selection of Oregon wines. We've had John Prine on the show, most recently at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and we'll be sure to sign him up for another appearance in the fall.