Dear Garrison,
I count on you, for our children's sake, to get this right....it's about grammar.

If one feels queasy, if one feels as if one were going to vomit, one is "nauseated." I believe that Alvin was nauseated when he drank beer after having fallen through the ice. If something causes one to be queasy, that something is "nauseous." (Then again, perhaps Alvin WAS nauseous.)

Lenten blessing to you and Alvin

Robin B.
Sewanee, TN

The difference between "nauseated" and "nauseous" was explained to me once by my sister-in-law in Boston but we were sitting in a bar in a hotel and I was paying more attention to some people at a nearby table, especially a woman in furs who looked Austrian and rich and a young man who was nuzzling her and plying her with drinks. The Austrian woman did not appear to be as fond of him as he was of her, and I found him rather, well, disgusting. So I immediately forgot the grammar lesson. My sister-in-law, by the way, was drinking a glass of white wine and I was drinking a ginger ale, so neither of us was feeling queasy. I can assure you that I wasn't. I am writing this at a desk a few feet away from a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, which surely would clarify this whole question, but the book weighs as much as a 30.06 Remington and I am simply too tired to lift it. Sewanee is a place with powerful literary associations for me — the Sewanee Review, the Fugitive poets, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren and so forth, the "Ode to the Confederate Dead," and when someone named Robin from Sewanee tells me the difference between "nauseated" and "nauseous," I just automatically accept it. I'm that kind of guy. I respect authority. My rebellious years are far behind me. I drank back then and became nauseated by noxious liquids and perhaps behaved in a nauseous manner, but no more. Not if I can help it, which of course I can. Thanks for the advice.

Post to the Host:
I see in the Arizona Republic that the Border Patrol will be deploying an unmanned spyplane (a "drone") along the North Dakota border to watch for Canadians as they try to sneak into the USA to create mayhem. Thought you'd want to know, since you and I share a fear of those dreadful albeit courteous people — and it is your neighborhood that will be the theater of operations. You know how those people up there covet what we have.

Robert S.
Phoenix

They don't covet anything in Minnesota, sir, I can assure you of that. They know us too well. They are trying to get to Phoenix, Mr. S. It has been a long winter and they are wending their way south and will arrive just in time for your killer summer which will render them dazed and helpless. There could be thousands of them, sitting in shopping malls, overdressed, depressed, and yet terribly polite and unwilling to ask for help. You may have to force them to accept help, in the form of counseling, namely: "Go back to Manitoba." Phoenix surely does not need more northerners. We become gloomy and despondent when the temperature gets up over 100 degrees and we are likely to go berserk and attack people with caulking guns.

Post to the Host:
It's the 3/24 show I'm listening to through increasing static (due to some atmospheric deviltry) as I feel obligated to comment.

I loved the reference to Samuel Colt (special thanks to Fred for the spinning cartridge magazine) but you left a little to be desired in the area of differentiation between the most basic of firearms. Remington does make a 30-06 but it is by no means a shotgun. We're talkin' rifle here. The 30-06 might be a decent choice for game some distance off like deer although most might want a larger caliber for something with the ability to acutely form a grudge such as bear. A shotgun is the weapon of choice for occasions of a more 'up-close-and-personal' nature... like weddings.

Have a blessed day,
Mike R.
Ann Arbor

You're dealing with dummies, Mike, so when I wrote "thirty-ought-six" into the Guy Noir script for Barbara Barbara to shoot the bear with as she walked the mountain path with Harrison Ford ("the big sissy") I was operating from some old memory of something I heard somebody say once. And it sounds good — "thirty-ought-six" — so I typed it. Okay. It played well with that New York audience, none of whom has ever put finger to trigger (probably), just as I haven't since I was 12. But I will defend my script. (My obligation as a writer.) Barbara Barbara and Harrison Ford were hiking in the mountains and the grizzly came upon them by surprised. NOWHERE IN THE SCRIPT DID IT SAY THEY WERE OUT FOR BEAR. They might've been out hunting ground squirrels for all we know. She raised the rifle to her shoulder and she shot the grizzly in the eye and killed it. SHE DID THE BEST SHE COULD WITH WHAT SHE HAD. I could've put a slingshot in her hand with a sharp stone and I could've had her shoot
the stone and hit the grizzly in a CERTAIN PLACE UNNAMED ON THE RADIO BUT UNDERSTOOD BY ALL MALE LISTENERS and brought the bear moaning to its knees where she could have popped two Libriums into its gaping maw and given herself and Harrison plenty of time to skedaddle. Life, Mr. Robbins, is all about doing the best you can with what you have. That valiant woman only had a 30.06 cradled in her sinewy arms and, surprised by the behemoth, she raised it and with amazing accuracy, hit it in the eyeball. This often happens on our show. I could've given her a bazooka or an anti-tank weapon or a laser sword but I chose not to. I hope this answers your question, which, now that I look at your letter again, I see you didn't ask — okay, I hope this explains my method, and I hope it doesn't irritate you. I do not want to get on the wrong side of a guy who knows this much about guns.

Post to the Host:
Being an English teacher I don't have the dough to waste on fancy dress shirts for work, especially since I keep forgetting to cap felt-tip pens and stick them in the pocket. So I buy them at the resale shop. I also have a couple of holy grails that I check for on every visit: a Burberry raincoast and anything from Patagonia. Well, last Saturday I got a scarlet Patagonia jacket for $4 and something made me stop by the T-shirt rack.

There it was: an almost new, hardly-worn St. Olaf's T-shirt. Medium-sized and not even a lutfisk stain on it. How did it get here, out of all the resale shops in the world? Why was I drawn to it. What does it mean?

How did it get to Atlanta? I imagined some failed romance; a heart broken by a feckless bachelor farmer, perhaps.

Also, my daughter will be looking for colleges in four years. She has Viking hair but a Sl avic genetic background, with some Lithuanian. Would she be welcome at St. Olaf's or do you have to be Norwegian?

Janusz M.
Atlanta, GA

I don't think you should take that t-shirt as a sign from heaven that your daughter should go to St. Olaf's, Janusz. It wound up at the resale shop because it was a gift to a Georgia woman from an Ole who was crazy about her and she about him until she started to read about Minnesota climate and that cooled her jets. Also she had no interest in living on his family's soybean farm west of Olivia. That's how Norwegian bachelor farmers are made, Janusz. They're good men who fell in love with southern women. The women got over them but they couldn't get over the women. They sit in their lonely farmhouses listening to Hank Williams and grieving into their beer.

I don't know enough about colleges to advise you. The last person I put through college graduated in 1993 and the next one I will put through is only nine years old. A big gap there. St. Olaf ranks well among small liberal-arts colleges and it aims to be diverse in its student population — the Minneapolis Star-Tribune recently ran a big article about the admissions process at St. Olaf, which you'd find interesting. But it would be good for your daughter to come have a look at the Midwest — visit Grinnell in Iowa and Lawrence in Wisconsin and St. Olaf and any other schools that strike her fancy, and do it in the winter. If she goes to college up here, it would be a cultural exchange experience without need for a passport.

Post to the Host:
Your book "Good Poems" was lying in my backseat when it was spotted by a friend as we were visiting by my car. She scoffed, "Good Poems! Couldn't you find any great poems?" I found myself in the awkward position of having to defend the book, its title and in a roundabout way -- you. So why didn't you call the book "Great Poems"? They are, you know. What gives?

Cindy H.
Remus, Michigan

Minnesota is a good place to live, not great, and I come from a good family, and I married a good woman. My child goes to a good school. Why complicate things with superlatives? If "Great Poems" why not Fabulous or Stupendous or Utterly Amazing? It's a world of hype. A book of good poems is good enough for me and if you think they're great, then that's wonderful.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
As a loyal fan (even during the hiatus years) since 1978, I cannot help but wonder when "A Prairie Home Companion" will feature a talent show for us chronologically challenged types who have talent, but not youth.

The world may truly belong to youth and the young, but don't we — the not-so-young — deserve what may be our last chance to wrest a morsel of air time from those who will ultimately inherit our jobs, fortunes and breathing space as we slip off into that good night?

Is there even a glimmer of a chance that us over-50 types will have our own opportunity to (metaphorically, if not oxymoronically) shine over the radio airwaves?

Waiting hopefully,
Cady
The Forgotten Middle-Aged Talent

You touch my heart, dear, but the truth is that America wants youth. Them is the breaks. Time runs out eventually. Age does dreadful things to the human voice, not to mention the memory and coordination. We've held innumerable talent contests and almost every time, the youngest contestant has been voted first prize by the audience. Some worthy person my age stands up and strums and warbles and the crowd listens politely and then a 12-year-old girl with braces and wavy blonde hair and glasses comes out in her plaid skirt and Mary Janes and sings "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and that's it, it's over, hello Heidi, goodbye gramps. Shirley Temple upstaged Bill (Bojangles) Robinson and kids have been doing it ever since. So we'll do the Talent Under Thirty contest in April and let the youngsters fight it out among themselves and you and I can sit off to the side and make sardonic comments.

Ordinarily I don't like to use this space to talk about my newspaper column but the most recent column aroused such angry reactions that I thought I should reply. The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days, and two sentences about gay people lit a fire in some readers and sent them racing to their computers to fire off some jagged e-mails. That's okay. But the underlying cause of the trouble is rather simple.

I live in a small world — the world of entertainment, musicians, writers — in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes. Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversaries, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial. In almost every state, gay marriage would be voted down if put on a ballot. Gay men and women have been targeted by the right wing as a hot-button issue. And so gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree. In the small world I live in, they feel accepted and cherished as individuals, but in the larger world they may feel like Types. My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I.

Post to the Host:
My son, Peter, was just 10 years old when he went away to the American Boychoir School in Princeton, NJ. It was a harrowing time for all of us. My husband and I felt it was the right thing for him, but it was not easy, especially the first year. Over spring break that year, he sat at the kitchen table with me, thinking about going back to school soon, and I saw that the tears were going to flow. "Mom," he said, "I think I need more ketchup in my diet." That was when we knew he was going to be OK.

Peter spent 3 years at the Boychoir School, sang some amazing music with some of the best symphony orchestras in the world, traveled to Japan, Denmark, Latvia and Sweden, plus all over the USA, and got a first rate academic education at the same time. Peter is 16 now, and still singing. He has thanked us for sending him to the Boychoir School, and said it was all worth it. But it was only possible because of ketchup. Thanks.

A Mom in New York

The incredible bravery of the young — it almost brings a person to tears. Somehow I just cannot fathom going away to school at the age of ten, if I think back to myself in Anoka, Minnesota, riding my bike around the gravel roads and running up and down the ravine playing soldier and listening to "Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Gang" on the radio. To uproot and live in a dormitory among other boys and all so one could sing Monteverdi and Mostaciolli and Cannelloni and Purcell and Byrd — incredible, as the French would say. Now that he's 16, he can see for himself what a good decision his parents made and how much this did for him, getting all these experiences, maturing, meeting people, but at the time, I'm sure it felt like abandonment. I'm glad ketchup could help. There are, by the way, hundreds of varieties of ketchup for future needs. Hotter, sweeter, darker, lighter. Peter may want to try variations as he gets older and faces new crises. Romance, for example. Never form a relationship with someone who can't appreciate good tomatoes and tomato by-products.

Hey GK:
I recently started listening to A Prairie Home Companion online and I really enjoy it. I'm in my mid
twenties. I told my aunt about the show last week and she made a funny face. "Your great grandmother tried to get us to listen back when she was still alive," she said. "But we never did. All her friends at the home listened and it seemed too 'old' for us."

Am I getting "old" now? Am I losing touch with hip coolness, or is this just a retro thing, a case of everything old becomming new again? Whatever the case, I'll keep listening, even if it means I have to hike my pants to my armpits and yell at whipersnappers to get off my lawn.

Joe S.
Columbus OH

A funny letter, Joe, and funny is funny, if you ask me. Parts of Mark Twain are still hilarious and even parts of Chaucer, while some sitcoms written six months ago are dead on arrival. Your aunt didn't listen because her grandma did, and people in the Forties turned their backs on jazz of the Twenties, leaving it to people in the Sixties to rediscover King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. These decade labels sort of wear out, and age becomes less important once you get past thirty. You go to the opera and see a higher proportion of old people, but if Renée Fleming and Dmitri Hvostorowki are singing "Eugen Onegin" you don't really notice. The lights go down and you get absorbed in the story. The opera dates from back when my grandma was born. It doesn't matter. All I know is that I love the show and love live radio, which as you know died out in the late Fifties. And it warms my heart to think that you might be listening. Wear your pants on your hips, though, or slightly below, and don't use the word "whippersnappers". It dates you.

Post to the Host:
my apologies, this is about a newspaper column that ran in February:

What is a carpet-chewer? My husband asked whether it was the same as a rug-muncher! I told him I didn't think so, since apparently Michael Moore fits the category.

Sorry for my ignorance.

thanx

Susan R.
Eudora, Kansas

A carpet-chewer is someone who reaches a state of blind fury and in his rage chews the carpet. An angry person, especially one who does it in public for effect.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
As I stood in my kitchen listening to tonight's joyous reminiscence of musical comedies, I found myself dancing and humming along with the musicians to the outstanding music which lit up my diverse decades, and which most listeners only recognize secondarily. Quelle joie! Quel plaisir! It made time stand still (something I particularly appreciate!) Thank you.

Jane K.
Ithaca, NY

We'll do more in the future, Jane. It's a great American art form, as I discovered once years ago when I took three Danes and a Brit to see "Music Man" at the New York City Opera and at intermission they looked quite ready to leave. They just plain didn't get it. Too corny. Too slick. Too simple. A few years ago at the Goodspeed Opera House up in Connecticut I saw a summer production of an old Thirties musical, one of those Come-on-kids, let's-put-on-a-show musicals, and the cast was all very young, and the effect was so dynamic — and you realized that the form is sort of a beautiful machine, and when the timing is right and the casting is even, the old thing can fly. It doesn't depend on a big star.

Mr. Keillor
I just can't take it anymore. Modern poetry has put a bullet through my creative heart. A long time ago I fell in love with the written word. Through my years, I've written trashcans full of stories, poems and what-nots. It was a wonderful hobby that taught me to appreciate the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Bob Dylan and Kurt Vonnegut. But now I've fallen on hard times. Through the Writers Almanac I've been hopelessly exposed to modern poetry (I guess that's what it is) and I am so lost. What I feel I see in print there are so many small piles of drivel, devoid of thought or effort, consisting of nothing more than ego. Please forgive me but I feel that what passes as poetry today is usually just a sentence or two chopped up in pieces and arranged in a confusing manner. My dog sheds more poetically. I know I'm doomed forever to writer's hell for questioning the emperor's outfit, but I've now lost the ability to write anything much more than comments to a website. I plead for guidance.

Bill S.
Fenton, MO.

No need to suffer, Mr. S. If your dog is more poetic to you than what you hear on The Writers Almanac, you should spend more time with your dog. It's a free country. Once you're out of high school, nobody is forcing you to pay any attention to poetry at all. You've made up your mind. Stick with it.