Greetings sir—
My husband and I named our dog Keillor after you. You had just visited San Diego and my husband and I had just been to see you when we adopted our Golden Retriever. Your show has such an influence on us, we chose to name him after you.

However, we find it hard to get the pronunciation of his/your name across to people we introduce him to. We try to annunciate it as "Key-lore" but people still try to call him Killer.

Do you have any advice for our little problem?

Kimberly Castillo
San Diego, CA

I'm honored, of course, since it's a Golden Retriever. (A Corgi, no, or a beagle, but a retriever — basically that's what I do.) The name should be pronounced KEEL-er, but some people are going to call him Killer anyway. They called me that in junior high school and I just had to grin and bear it. What's wrong with Castillo as a dog's name, by the way?

Post to the Host:
In 1917 my grandfather compiled and privately published a family history drawn largely from a collection of letters among family members going back to the early 1800's. A prominent figure is his grandfather (my great-great grandfather) Lewis Henry Machen, who, for much of his career served in various administrative posts in the office of the Clerk of the Senate. He is a footnote
in history as having the presence of mind, just before the British sacked Washington, D.C. in 1814, to commandeer a horse cart and remove to his farm in Prince George's County, Maryland, and thus rescue from certain destruction, all the archives of the proceedings of the Senate.

In the book my grandfather relates the following interesting mischief by his father, then a 22-year old student at Harvard College, resulting in profound impact to all the residents of your great state:

"In the winter and early spring of 1849, he [Arthur W. Machen 1827-1916] accompanied his father [Lewis Henry Machen 1790-1863] to Washington and assisted the latter in the clerical portion of his labours during the sessions of Congress. He used to tell how in the course of this work he changed the spelling of "Minesota." Prior to this time, the word had usually been spelled with one "n," and that spelling was used in the Bill for creating a territorial government as it was introduced and, I believe, as it passed Congress. But my father was entrusted with the engrossing of the Bill, and, thinking that "Minnesota" had a better appearance than "Minesota," he inserted a second "n." The Act as signed by the President, therefore, created the Territory of Minnesota, and by that name as territory and State it has ever since been known and probably will continue to be known."

Regards,

John P. Machen
Baltimore, Maryland

We Minnesotans are grateful to your ancestor, Mr. Machen, and if you should ever come out this way, let us know and we'll put on a party.

Post to the Host:
In June my town (I live in Germany) is hosting a church choir festival. Choirs are encouraged to perform selections which reflect "the lighter side of Christianity." Do you know of any songs that would fill the bill? We're a small choir, by the way, but enthusiastic.

And as long as I'm writing, I'd like to say how much I enjoyed the Dakotadome show you did last year. Maybe it's just because I'm from South Dakota and a USD graduate, but I thought the way you and your crew used those instruments to connect Bach and Custer and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Johnny Cash was truly meisterhaft. Thanks!

Rebecca H.
St. Ingbert, Germany

The show in South Dakota was the bright idea of Mr. Al Neuharth, an alumnus of USD and an old newspaperman, so he gets half the credit and the other half goes to the music museum in Vermillion which has a fabulous collection of old instruments.

As for your choir, I recommend that you look into the repertoire of African-American spirituals. When I lived in Denmark, I heard a lot of Danish choirs do those with real joy and grace. Of course you had to get used to the idea of seeing blonde-blue-eyed people singing, "Way down in Egypt land, let my people go" and sometimes they tried too hard to give the music a backbeat, but it was lighter than the German chorale. If by "light" you mean humorous, I don't know — maybe "Vatican Rag" by Tom Lehrer.

Dear Ask Mr. English Major,
James J. Kilpatrick recently wrote a column eschewing the double possessive. When Garrison Keillor on his radio show, speaking of a man who had recently died, described the fellow as "a friend of Butch Thompson's", I started to gloat. Had I caught the venerable GK in an error of English usage? According to Mr. Kilpatrick, he should properly have said, a friend of Butch Thompson." But then, just a few moments later, GK was introducing the next musical number which was a "piece of Butch Thompson's". Now I am really confused. How could they possibly play a "piece of Butch Thompson"?

Please help me sort this out, it's been eating at me for two days.

Doug F.
Seattle, WA

I am glad somebody takes grammar seriously, but two days of suffering is too much. The double possessive construction you cite is utterly common and has been for centuries and thus is acceptable. It's what people actually say, as opposed to what logic might dictate. It's a useful construction. There is a difference between "a picture of my brother" and "a picture of my brother's," for example. Or "a piece of Butch Thompson's" and "a piece of Butch Thompson". But we'd say "a friend of public radio" or "a friend of the spotted owl". Quite an interesting language you chose for your first language, Doug.

Post to the Host:
Do you ever walk on the actual "Lake Wobegon" trail? I have been on it on my travels back to Minnesota. I roller-bladed most of it with a friend from St. Joseph to Avon and stopped and had a Grain Belt at a tiny bar in the middle of the day. Then we rolled from Avon to Albany. We rollerbladed right into a small town parade in Melrose. I started listening to your show when I lived in southern New Mexico and continue here in Florida. But I never "felt" your show like I did during my time on the beautiful Lake Wobegon Trail.

Kerry C.
St. Petersburg, FL

That's lovely to imagine, a couple of Florida girls roller-blading on a bike trail through the rolling hills of central Minnesota, past dairy farms and little towns with water towers, and feeling the grace and serenity of the landscape. If you blast past on I-94, you miss a lot of detail. The Lake Wobegon Trail was dedicated back in September, 1998, and Congressman Jim Oberstar was there in his Spandex bike outfit, who was instrumental in the rail-to-trail campaign. And now Stearns County is preparing to link the Wobegon Trail with the Central Lakes Trail to make a continuous 120-mile paved path, the longest in the country, or so I hear. The dedication will be in late August in Osakis and I plan to be there and if you're in the vicinity, Kelly, you should come and bring your blades. Wear a big orange Florida shirt so we'll know who you are.

Dear Garrison Keillor,
What a wonderful fish story about Gunner the A.A. spaniel and Pete the fighting muskie! H. L. Mencken would have laughed out loud. Mark Twain would have been envious. And now that my students have taught me how to podcast (in return for my teaching them Plato), I can listen to your tale over and over again. A good story bears repeating.

May your Lent be delightfully gloomy!

David G.
Riverside, CA

Hard to imagine a story about ice fishing getting traction in Riverside, but glad you enjoyed it. So did Lance my old classmate who figured in the story.

Dear Mr Keillor,
We desperately need your help. Britain has been enveloped in a vast blanket of snow which was, at its height in Wootton, a stunning 3 inches at the deepest. As you can imagine this resulted in a major crisis in which all schools were closed, in particular those that could be reached on foot within 10 minutes.

The main reason for closing the schools was Health & Safety. If one of the little dears cops a snow ball in the face the Local Authority might get sued. So they close the schools & all the children just run wild throwing snowballs, making snowmen, rolling up great balls of snow & leaving them in the middle of the road.

How do you survive in a climate where snow & ice is a daily threat? ...Sorry... it just started raining 10 minutes ago & all the snow has now gone.

All is back to normal. A bit damp & misty but we can just survive.

Thank you for your great show.

Mike T.
Wootton Bedfordshire, England

Whew, you had us all excited there, Mike. Glad that nature reversed itself. In the Victorian novels of my youth, English people sat indoors during snowstorms and composed letters to friends and drank tea and fretted about the servants. Only a few urchins threw snowballs and usually they threw them at mailmen and other authority figures and then they ran like mad down an alley. I don't remember anybody getting hurt.

Post to the Host:
In all of the years I have been listening to and supporting A Prairie Home Companion, I have never felt so let down and disappointed as I do tonight. Why, oh, why did you find it necessary to join in with all of the mainstream media "vampires" to make fun of the public breakdown suffered by Lisa Marie Nowak? I really did think APHC was so much better than that. There is so much sorrow and ugliness in the world right now — and APHC has always been an oasis of common sense, calm and small and hopeful stories. How utterly disappointing to hear you plunge into the cesspool with the rest.

Susan W.
Petersburgh, NY

You may well be right, Susan, but I don't know that "breakdown" is how I would describe a 900-mile drive while wearing adult diapers and carrying rubber hose, a mallet, tear gas, etc., in order to attack another woman. That is a long drive. I feel sorry for Lisa Nowak, and I feel sorry for Senator Biden who spoke so loosely and shot his presidential campaign in the foot, and I feel sorry for the guy who attached a lawn chair to a weather balloon and sailed off into the sky, and for everyone who stepped on a banana peel and went down. Comedy is cruel sometimes, and semi-tasteless, but I thought the Lisa Nowak reference was funny and so did the audience. They laughed. Had Ms. Nowak injured her intended victim, it wouldn't have been funny. But the list of weapons, and the diapers, were funny. Mel Brooks said, "Tragedy is when I have a hangnail. Comedy is when you fall in a hole and break your neck." I don't go that far, but you get the idea. And someday when I am arrested in a diaper
and carrying a hose and a gas cartridge, I hope you get a good laugh out of it.

Post to the Host:
Loved the jokes — How to you introduce a hamburger? Meet Patty — and also the guy who named his pet Tiny because it was "my newt" were my faves. I've been relaying most of them to my two girls and hearing them groan.

I've spent the last two days in long johns and an Elmer Fudd cap, bringing in wood for the fire, baking a double batch of banana bread just to save on the fuel bill, and deciding a loaf pan just might be the right size for 2 parakeets.

GK, you are making my plummet into middle age a little less intolerable! I would have written a little sooner, but I had to pour a can of Coke and a half-cup of lemon juice into the washer to get the grease out of my husband's mechanic wardrobe. Greetings and thanks from the southernmost part of the state, just a mile west of Round Prairie Lutheran Church on I-35.

Renae Sather
Glenville, MN

I love dumb jokes too, some of them, like "my newt" which is right around third-grade level and hits me where I live. Renae, you're all the audience a man could want, you justify all the trouble we go to every week, setting up microphones, popping popcorn, and all the rest of it. You're not plummeting, you are on a gentle glide path and just when you least expect it you'll get a big updraft and soar away like nobody's business. The Coke and lemon juice solvent is something you might think about manufacturing — Sather's Lather — and if you do, we can find you some mechanic jokes to put on the side of the package.

Dear Garrison,
Many, many thanks for what you said abut the homeless being just ordinary people like you and me on this weekend's "Lake Wobegon." All too often people look down their noses at the homeless, considering them inferior to themselves, whereas many, if not most of them are simply victims of a very unjust economic situation. Such words from you in a humorous context are far more effective of good than sermons from the likes of me.

(Rev.) Tom S., S.J.

There are times when a person feels so low that nobody could possibly be inferior, and maybe that's why God grants us the blues. And when the blues strikes you hard and it's also twenty below zero, it's a harrowing experience, and that's where that particular monologue comes from. The insight on the homeless comes from my brother and from my wife, not from me. They get out and see more than I do. I just steal from what I overhear and stick it into stories. And don't disparage the good that is effected by sermons from the likes of you.

Molly Ivins
Enlivens us all.
She was tossed in—
To Austin
But could thrive in
St. Paul.
If you're arrivin' —
Whenever you're due—
Give me a call
Soon as you're here.
I'll find a drive-in
That serves barbecue
And Lone Star beer.

Two-thousand seven
She's flown up to heaven
And is giving St. Peter
(Who came out to meet her)
A piece of her mind.
We miss you, old girl,
It's a poorer world
You've left behind.

She was one of the great newspaper columnists of all time and we were proud to have her on our show in Austin last year where, even though terribly ill, she brought down the house. Her regal presence and her brilliant wit that day will be long remembered. She was firing on all eight cylinders.

The Texas Observer's Memorial to Molly Ivins