Hi there Mr. GK,
Do you really know all the words you use in your newspaper columns and monologues off the top of your head (e.g. "declensions," "troglodyte," "persiflage") or do you have a snazzy thesaurus gizmo? I have to run back to the dictionary when you use a doozie like "escutcheon".

Mindy Scherr
San Juan Bautista, CA

Mindy, I sat around and read from Webster's during my lonely childhood and when you have done that, words like "escutcheon" lodge in your brain. I believe it means a coat of arms and it's used in the phrase "a blot on the escutcheon," meaning a shameful episode in one's past. It's a piece of humorous bombast. I probably got "persiflage" from reading H.L. Mencken back in my solitary youth — he loved the language and loved to beat politicians over the head with it. "Declensions" of course is a grammatical term, nothing fancy, but the others are words that have real heft or charm to me. Yes, I have a thesaurus and I love using it, but the words you mention are all up in my little head. Along with "ensconced". I haven't used that one lately but I will find an opportunity.

Hello Garrison,
I thoroughly enjoyed the "Listeners' Choice" show this past weekend. This format was much more enjoyable than say, listening to an old show from the past, no offense intended.

It was just a nice mix of really old stuff and kind of old stuff. Plus it was fun listening to your voice change over the years. My wife thinks your voice nowadays is more "rich" and has "more depth," whatever that means...

Kevin Kapp
Prescott, Arizona

Kevin, I skipped the Listener's Choice show. My choice is always to focus on the present and the future and avoid unpleasant reminders of the past, such as very old broadcasts in which one's voice sounds like a terrified entrant in the 4-H Speaking Contest or sometimes a duck on nitrous oxide. But I'm glad you enjoyed listening to it. And thank your wife for her kind thoughts. One would want to have a richer voice, I think, though one wouldn't want it to get plummy like Orson Welles's or Charles Laughton's. I recall that Charles Laughton came on the old Ed Sullivan show a few times, reading from the Old Testament. There he was, a big pork pie of a man sandwiched between a chimpanzee act and the McGuire Sisters, standing at a lectern and intoning a psalm in a voice loaded with gravy. People loved to listen to vowels back then, I guess.

Hi Garrison.
Three years ago, my son Jeff and I were listening to "Prairie Home" as we drove through northern Nebraska on our way to Mount Rushmore. Jeff is 27 and has Down's Syndrome and every year we take a trip together. Just outside of O'Neill, Nebraska, you gave us a sweet rendition of the tune "Remember Me" and I found myself crooning along with you as we sprinted through the Nebraska countryside. My son then joined in with the lines, "Remember me, when the candle lights are gleaming... Remember me, at the close of a long long day...It would be so sweet, when all alone I'm dreaming...Just to know you still remember me". I'll always treasure that memory of my son's singing along with you and me. Thanks.

Dennis McNiel
Lawrence, KS

I learned that song from Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson, Dennis, who sang it on the show back around the time Jeff was born. It was written by an old radio singing couple, Lulu and Scotty, I believe. My first wife loved the song and I think of her when I sing, "Once you promised me that you'd be mine forever/And I'd be yours to the end of eternity./But all those vows are broken now and we can never/Be the same except in memory."

Post to the Host:
For past few months I have been listening to Prairie Home Companion, and especially loved the segment about Guy Noir, P.I.

At the beginning and at the end of the Guy Noir segment, a female voice announced in quite a sensual tone, "Guy Noir, Private Eye" — that's one of the best voices I ever heard on the radio.

This week I heard a masculine voice do the same announcement, which I think is rather a spoiler. I really wish you'd continue to use the same voice as before.

Thanks
— Rick

Rick, I couldn't agree more. The sensuous female voice is that of Sue Scott, who is not only a talented radio actor but also what we in the business refer to as a "hottie". She is tall and lissome and willowy and she has men hanging over the balcony rail, panting and moaning. But the masculine voice is also that of Sue Scott. She can play both women and men. I wish she'd stick with the sensuous stuff, but I guess there is another side of her — a gun-toting, chainsaw-swinging, tobacco-chewing side — that she needs to express.

Post to the Host:
My husband and I are known to schedule our Saturdays around your show (something we do not do for TV programs, even our favorites). Being the literary one, I live for the most recent "lake news" and my husband thrives on your musical guests. Recently, we heard the most glorious sound coming from our radio, it haunted my husband and today he found it on your website: "Atlanta Twilight Waltz". Please tell us on what CD it is published. Or if it isn't, it surely should be... he's been playing that portion of your show over and over and over…

Stephanie Bullwinkel
Lemont, IL

Stephanie, "Atlanta Twilight Waltz" was written by Richard Dworsky on the morning of that show, in honor of our being in Atlanta in June. It isn't on any CD as yet, but surely it will be.

Dear GK,
I listened to your broadcast this morning on my drive to work and heard you read Robert Herrick's poem, "Whenas In Silk My Julia Goes" and I remembered how in my youth I loved words such as "liquefaction of her clothes," and repeated them in my head for weeks, jumped rope to them, bounced balls to them. I always thought I'd become a writer but the vicissitudes of life never led to that path until now with computers everywhere, including my own home. Do you think that love of words is an indicator that I should begin bumbling along? Should a 59-year-old grandmother lay into her word processor and let it rip? My husband suggests writing about my family because they are bizarre and all gone to glory, and now that I've become acquainted with my deceased brother's friends, what I've learned about him alone would make hair grow back on anyone's head. I'd like to keep the voice true but gentle and funny, as you do in your writing efforts.

JP

Dear JP, Sit down at the computer and let go and tell what you know. Start with the deceased brother and see where that takes you. Writers are people who write and the main thing about writing is rewriting. Your chances are as good as anybody else's, assuming you have a good ear (it sounds as if you do) and the ability to take a pencil to your own work and excise what needs to be excised and rewrite the rest. As I look back over this paragraph, I'd like to rewrite the whole thing, but the gist of it would be the same: by all means, go ahead, and God bless you.

Mr. Keillor,
I read the article in The Washington Post about the Prairie Home movie, to which I am looking forward, by the way; I figure if you've endorsed and involved yourself in it, the final product must be good. However, I noticed that Peter Kaufman referred to Tim Russell as Tom Russell. Is this an alias of some sort, an attempt to throw people off the trail, or was Mr. Kaufman simply not paying attention?

Jenn German
Elkridge, MD

Jenn, it's an alias. Tim Russell is forced to work in movies under the name Tom Russell because he's been blacklisted for communist activities. His parents, Bertrand and Jane, were a well-known pinko couple in Tinseltown and Tim never accepted the fall of the Soviet Union. He still goes around singing those old Pete Seeger songs like "Peat Bog Soldiers" and "The Banks of Marble" and "We will not be afraid of Franco's fascists even though the bullets fall like sleet/ Round us stand those fearless men our comrades and for us there can be no defeat." He is a nice person in every other respect, but as a known Red he cannot work under his own name.

Dear Garrison,
It seems odd to use your first name as we've never met, but since I've listened to PHC all my life, I do feel like we have some sort of relationship.

I recently had my first real encounter with Lutherans. I volunteer at a charity called MedShare International every Saturday morning, where we sort surplus medical supplies for shipment to developing countries. We often have religious groups come in to help us with the sorting; being approximately atheistic, I always feel a bit awkward around them. However, this weekend, a Lutheran group came in to help out, and I immediately had a nice, warm feeling toward them. Over a box of surgical gowns, I worked up the courage to shyly say to one: "So, do you mind if I ask... As a Lutheran, do you listen to Garrison Keillor?" Without a blink, without a pause, came the reply: "Oh, yes, all the time!"

So I just wanted to say: thank you for predisposing me to feel a kinship with Lutherans, and for giving me a conversational "in" with them!

— Sarah

Sarah, your Lutheran friend was being polite and positive, which are Lutheran traits, and so are generosity and the love of work, which led her to volunteer on a Saturday morning. I'm not surprised that you felt that instant kinship with them. I feel the same way anytime I set foot in a Lutheran church, enveloped by good-hearted people, and inside of ten minutes I start to feel pangs of guilt for every joke I've made at their expense. There was a Lutheran church in San Luis Obispo that put on a potluck supper when PHC was there and we stood around and sang songs together and it was just like you expect heaven will be, except with tuna hotdish. The show we did at St. Olaf College in Northfield with the magnificent orchestra and choir and the whole audience singing "Children of the Heavenly Father" by heart and in four-part harmony. This is one thing you atheists miss out on, Sarah — standing shoulder-to-shoulder with others and singing in harmony. It may be what makes Lutherans so easy to be around, their sense of sympathetic harmony.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I don't know if you know this, but you can get a definition from Google by typing "define:" and then the word. E.g., "define:prone." (Or "define:tautology".) Now, that being said, I love your show, have grown up with it. My question is about that guy who lives in the basement. We haven't heard from him in a very long time and I'm just wondering if he's okay.

— Demetri

Demetri, we decided to leave Larry alone and see if he wouldn't come up from the basement and live a normal life. He hasn't. So I suppose we must trek down there again and try to find the light switch and see what is going on in the far corner beyond the washer and dryer. Didn't he become a multi-millionaire a couple years ago? Or did I dream that? I just wish he'd get over his resentment of me for hitting him on the head with the sandbag. It was an accident.