Dear Mr. Keillor,
I graduated from college last year. After a few months leeching off my parents and being lazy, I started my first real job. Most of my day is spent in my cubicle staring at a computer monitor with intermittent paper shuffling. I've been listening to your program for as long as I can remember and you always seem to have some insight, some wise suggestion, for people who are growing up. Any suggestions for me? A new office drone struggling with boredom and cubicle fever (its a lot like cabin fever)?

Michael P.
Hoover, AL

You did the right thing and put your foot in the water and of course it's cold. My advice is: be patient and make a plan and keep searching for your truest self. Don't become an indentured servant. That's somebody who hates work and so he spends his money, and borrows more, in order to alleviate his suffering, thereby becoming a prisoner of the job. So be frugal, stingy even. Salt as much money away as you can, so that if some jerk of a boss yanks your chain and insults you, you can walk away without trepidation. Make a plan that you'll stick it out for a year and that in six months you'll look at your options. Be an exemplary employee ---- it helps pass the time and it's a good exercise. Meanwhile, continue your education, except now with no need to please teachers or write bullshit papers or trim your sails to match prevailing opinion. There is no better way to find out who you are than to sit down and write about what's happening to you and what you think. At work you can be a perfectly polite, helpful, quiet, reliable drone, but don't confuse that persona with yourself: you are you and don't waste any time finding out more about you. In the end, your continuing education ---- the valuable part of your education, since it's what you do on your own ---- and your self-awareness will be what guide you on to the next phase of your working life. The part that's quite a lot of fun.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I'm writing from down here in the southern borderlands of Texas, just up from the river. This is the home base of most of the migrant population of the Central States--they come back home from up North when the labor slows down and the lack of good peppers becomes unbearable. They talk about Lake Wobegon and the goofy folks thereabouts, but I never hear the Lake Wobegon folks talk about them. My beautiful wife is a brilliant school teacher and has all of these bright kiddos come into class a month late and then leave a month early for long drives and long days. It's sad to see these shining faces and hard-working hands head out the school door and into that strange and risky world of hot, unappreciated work with some helpings of racism. Is there an invisibility trick that families and mobile communities use when they get up there to your neck of the woods?

Anyway, I'm an organic vegetable farmer and a pastor, and I sure enjoy it when you talk so passionately about good food production on your show.

John G.
San Juan, TX

The Mexican migrants are living the lives of our ancestors and we know it. Lives of hard work, outside the mainstream, lives that would feel hopeless except for powerful family loyalty and faith. So we have some empathy for these dark mysterious figures in our midst. Lake Wobegon, however, is dairy and soybeans, not the sort of farming that requires seasonal labor, so the dark strangers pass through here almost without us seeing them. They look at our little town in passing, the neat lawns and stucco houses and shops and the grain elevator, and see nothing for themselves there and keep driving. I too feel for those bright minds who come late and leave early. Children are durable and don't necessarily wilt under adversity, just as our own children don't necessarily thrive under luxury and comfort. Lucky you to be in a place where you can see all of this with your own eyes.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
While sitting through the credits at the end of your movie, I was astonished to see a "special effects" coordinator. I admit I arrived a few minutes late, but if the beginning was like the rest of the film, I'm certain I didn't miss any rampaging dinosaurs or spectacular explosions. What gives? Did a space-battle sequence get cut? Or did you perhaps create the position for an underemployed friend?

James K.
New York, NY

James, I take it as a tribute that you sat through the credit roll. I only do that for movies I like or if I'm very curious about where they were shot ----- usually the location credits come at the verrrrrry end. The only special effect in the movie was the rain on the pavement in the opening shot, with Guy Noir inside Mickey's Diner, and in the later shot outside the Fitzgerald Theater, in which the Axeman drives away in a black Lincoln. The guy who got the special effects credit is Steve Hintz, who wielded a fireman's hose and wet down the street so that there were puddles in it to reflect Mickey's neon lights. Steve also put the raindrops on the glass windows of the diner at the end of the movie, when the Angel of Death walks along the sidewalk. outside of the diner and rounds her way in to see Garrison, Kevin, Meryl and Lily. I never met Steve Hintz before the shoot, but if you're making a movie and want rain , he's your rainmaker.

Mr. Keillor-
I have lived in the south, just north of Atlanta, GA, since 1984. I'll be moving soon to Brookings, SD and South Dakota State University to work on my Master's Degree in Fisheries Sciences. Do you have any advice to offer a southern boy on his first northern winter? I've heard that even a "mild" winter can see temperatures down to -20F. Is this true, or are the northerners in their own way just trying to scare me?

Thanks,

Steven R.
Marietta GA

Thanks to greenhouse gases, Steven, winter is no longer the frightful thing it was in my youth, and -20F is pretty rare. You'll find irritating things about northerners that will vex you more than winter ever could. We are not friendly, welcoming people. Well, I am, but most of the others aren't. We don't know how to fry chicken or make barbecue. Conversation is rather primitive here. Politics, as you might have guessed, is heavily influenced by Canadianism. Winter, my friend, is a pleasure. Buy good lightweight thermal clothing and go outdoors every day, cold or not, and take up broomball or cross-country skiing or winter golf or snowshoeing and you'll be a happy man. Cold, as you may know, is a stimulant. Welcome to South Dakota.

Hi Mr. Keillor,
I have enjoyed your comments on, and monologues that include, religion. However, I didn't know until recently that you were raised among the Plymouth Brethren. Would that be the sect from J. N. Darby? I was raised among the Exclusives myself, escaping at age 22. This upbringing considerably hampered my social and career life, much to my chagrin.

Brian M.
Seattle, WA

Yes, indeed. We read the J.N. Darby translation of the New Testament and C.H.M.'s commentaries and we sang from the Little Flock hymnbook and worshipped in a Gospel Hall, not a church, and it was called the Breaking of Bread, not a worship service, and there was no ordained minister, although now and then a Laboring Brother came around and lectured on the Chart of Time from Eternity to Eternity.

Your upbringing was MEANT to hamper your life, in the sense of directing you in a certain way and making you reluctant to go in other ways. Now you're on your own, making your own choices, but still with those voices in your head. Don't worry about it. Take the truth wherever you find it, including the past, and move forward bravely, and keep in mind that God loves you.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
A question about etiquette toward writers. My best friend from grade school is an up-and-coming writer/illustator of young adult graphic novels. She's published two full-length works and has contributed to several anthologies. I own the two books by her, and I love them. She's coming to visit me this fall for the first time in seven years. I don't want to look like a groupie/stalker if I have everything she's ever written and some of her original artwork framed on my walls. On the other hand, if I don't have everything, I'm worried that she'll be offended, and think (incorrectly!) that I don't care for her work or don't follow her successes. Please help! What is the proper etiquette when your friend is a semi-prolific writer?

Marcella

She's coming to see you and reminisce about old times, Marcella, not to gauge your interest in her work. Of course she'll be charmed to see that you've read her work and that's that. Tell her you love what she does and since that's the truth, there's no reason to worry about it. Writers aren't sensitive about this, at least professional writers aren't: we don't go into our friends' homes and scan the bookshelves for our tomes. We don't troll for compliments. We do our work, we hope for readers, we hope the work is good enough, and we move on. Enjoy the visit.

My wife and I saw your movie and were very much disappointed, because, having been listeners to your radio show for about 30 years, we cannot remember ever hearing the kind of jokes that Lefty and Dusty sang or the offensive "joke" about the death of the old trouper with his pants down to his ankles and the old "lady" making crude remarks about "putting your weiner in my bun" never would have occured on your radio show. That kind of "humor" does not resemble the real "Prairie Home Companion". You sold your soul for some pottage, GK. We are truly disappointed.

Bill C.
Ellison Bay, WI

I am sorry to have hurt your feelings, sir. The song "Bad Jokes" is one I've sung a couple times on the show, pretty much as Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly sang it in the movie, except they did add some jokes of their own. The joke about PMS is not one I would've used, for example. The old lady's line resembles the euphemisms for sex that I recall, from childhood hearing country people use. A playful sort of metaphor. I think of city people as being much more fastidious about ribaldry and country people enjoying it. Perhaps it's not that way in Ellison Bay, but it's that way in Lake Wobegon.

Hi, Mr. Keillor.

I've listened to your show pretty consistently for at least the last five years (that's 25%) of my life, and have just gotten my own show on Cornell University's brand new, student-run radio station! This comes as something of a surprise to me, because I never really had a pressing ambition to be a radio show host—I just applied ... and they gave it to me. I was wondering if you could give me any general tips for making a radio show as interesting as you do.

Katherine C.
Ithaca, NY

I was talking to a friend who does a daily radio show that is really free-form and loose and funny, a solo guy in a studio, sometimes taking phone calls, and he admitted that he spends hours every day writing for it. The show doesn't sound written, there isn't a script, but writing is nonetheless the backbone of it. You sit down and write out your thoughts, what you might want to say, and then you go do the show and maybe do something like what you wrote or maybe something entirely other, but the writing is the key. Having prepared one thing gives you the courage to improvise something else.

Second piece of advice: go for opposites, to keep your range open. For example, having a raucous rock n' roll theme song at the beginning will give you the freedom to talk about serious stuff. Being silly or sarcastic occasionally opens the door to being sentimental and sincere. Don't tie yourself down.

Third: entertain yourself. If you're bored, then you have a problem.

Mr. Keillor,
We were driving through some of the beautiful backroads here and listening to your prorgam last Saturday and shortly after a Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie commercial, we came upon a traffic jam on the two-lane rural highway ---- flashing lights and road flares --- and an overturned two-trailer flatbed with about a half-dozen open-lid cement cases of .cut rhubarb. The driver was okay, but steamed. He had his cap pushed back on his head and he was stalking the scene, hand on his hips, and you could tell he'd just as soon crawl into a hole or the nearest bar.

Would Bebopareebop products take away the taste of the shame and humiliation of dumping your load of rhubarb all over the highway?

Jeff D.
Banks, Oregon

Jeff, this is the first I've heard about mass shipments of rhubarb. I know it's sold in some stores but I never knew where it came from. Rural Oregon, I guess. My aunts used to cut it in the backyard, out in the weeds where it grew, and brought it in, and none of them overturned on the way. My guess is that the driver rewarded himself with a cold beer and a steak sandwich once the wrecker came and righted his trailer. A good experience for him. My guess is that he swerved to avoid something in the road. I'd always rather give a trucker the benefit of the doubt. So I don't think what you saw was shame or humiliation, just frustration at the high cost of a good deed.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
'A Prairie Home Companion' has been a favorite of mine for many years and I especially enjoy the rousing gospel music. My wife and I attend a Philippine Presbyterian church and sing in the choir, one of two non-Philippine people. The music tends to be rather homogeneous. How can I introduce some 'real' gospel music to these people, especially when about a quarter of them do not speak any English? The kind of music that makes people jump to their feet and clap and swayand speak in tongues and shout "Hallelujah" and "Praise the Lord".

Or am I expecting too much from people whose unwritten motto seems to be "If it isn't in the hymnal, then it isn't in our church"?

I await your advice.

Mark B.
Anaheim, California

It's not going to happen, Mark. I believe that faith and prayer can accomplish almost anything, but not within the church. Change within the church takes cutthroat politics and masterful passive-aggressive strategy. Don't go there. You're in a Filipino church. Be happy. If you need gospel music, find a black pentecostal outfit and wear nice clothes.