Dear GK,
I have been a fan of the show since my folks started listening back in 1986. (I was 2 years old then.) I love the show and listen to it every weekend. About 2 months ago my life changed forever and I was blessed with a beautiful healthy baby boy. His name is Vincent and he is already quite the character. I know you too are a parent and have way more experience at this than I, this is my first child. I was wondering what your best advice for a new parent would be. Thank you for many years of wonderful stories.

Lexy Washburn
Amherst, OH

You've begun a story yourself, Lexy, and this one takes place in real time and it keeps going on, faster and faster. In no time, people will be saying, "I can't believe he's a year old!" And suddenly middle school. And college. And then you — young as you are — will become a — well, never mind. It goes by fast. There are bookstores full of books that are full of advice for parents. I think my wife bought twenty or thirty of them, and we could ship you a whole boxful if you like. My own advice to the parents is to take care of yourselves and put your life back together. Whatever you loved to do before, try to get back to it. A little boy needs to grow up in the midst of happiness so do what you can to make yourself happy. Get your exercise, eat well, enjoy your friends and family, get music into your life, and try to do some good in the world. And someday bring the boy to Minneapolis. The avenues of Minneapolis west of Lyndale are alphabetical, and part of the alphabet goes Russell, Sheridan, Thomas, Upton, Vincent, Washburn. I think that I once told a story in which there was a Vincent Washburn. And now you have, too.

Dear Garrison:
For some reason or other I have just discovered the link to Mrs. Sundberg in your weekly emails concerning the upcoming shows. She seems too good to be true and I am wondering if she is a real person, or are you writing these comments and stories? The woman seems like she could be coming right from your homespun heart. If she truly is real, tell her I wish she was my Mom.

Thanks,

Maureen P.
Linden, MI

This is what happens when a man gets a reputation for creating fictions — people question every shred of reality around him. Well, I'm deeply honored that you think I could be writing Mrs. Sundberg's columns, but no, she is a real live person who lives in a small town in Minnesota, and if she seems too good to be true, well, the same could be said for a lot of Lutherans. We allowed her to take a pen name so that her kids wouldn't know she was talking about them, and I suppose that's all I should say.

Post to the Host:
Greetings, GK. Our family of four attended your show at the Fitzgerald on September 22. All day and on the way there we were bickering--the two adults, the almost-eleven-year-old, and The Teenager. We walked into that theater a dysfunctional family, and we walked out with smiles on our faces and treating each other with love and respect. Please, please don't retire before I get both my kids through their teenage years!!

A Mother

No plans for retirement here, Mother. We had a big time in Baltimore with Carole King and Jearlyn Steele doing that dynamite duet of "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman" and ten mnutes later the audience stood and did a rousing rendition of the national anthem. And Fred Newman did a very persuasve sound effect of a man shooting a flaming arrow through a bucket of small-curd cottage cheese. Plus a dolphin singing "O Maryland, My Maryland." We're having too much fun to quit. What would I do? I don't garden, I don't collect seashells, and my family thinks I am spending enough time with them as it is. I suppose I could read "Moby-Dick" and "Anna Karenina" and that book by Proust the title of which I can't remember but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to walk away from show business. I want to go back to Baltimore next season. I want to do another show in Alaska. I want to get Dolly Parton on the show, and Merle Haggard, and YoYo Ma, and Dick Hyman. And I like the challenge of trying to make your almost-11-year-old laugh. Those almost-elevens are a tough audience.

Dear GK,
I have recently converted to a Lutheran Church from a lifetime of being raised Catholic. What advice do you have for a young man to survive the transition?

Nikolas

If the transition is difficult, Nikolas, slip away and join us Episcopalians for a Sunday or two. There are Anglican-Catholic churches where high Mass is celebrated with smoke and bells and plenty of bowing and genuflecting, and any good Lutheran can attend in good conscience. Christian soldiers can move from one regiment to another. I'm an old fundamentalist who turned Episcopalian and last Sunday I went to a high Anglican service in Baltimore and even (shocking as this may seem) said the rosary along with all the others. A first for me. It's a life of adventure.

Post to the Host:
I was listening to your show in the backyard on Saturday while repairing a sprinkler head and my two little girls were busy picking up pecans, talking to each other, and suddenly, after the intermission, when the audience started singing the "Star Spangled Banner", I heard my children singing along. To this father, the sound of his children playing and singing happily can erase all the troubles of the world. I cannot put into words all that I was feeling in that moment, but I will remember it for the rest of my life.

Edward P.
San Antonio, TX

A sweet moment, Mr. P., and one we all recognize. My daughter's first-grade teacher Mrs. Ammerman had her class sing the national anthem, "America the Beautiful," "America" and "It's A Grand Old Flag" every morning as a sort of aerobic musical exercise, and so I've been listening to my daughter sing those songs for the past three years. Beautiful.

Post to the Host:
Thank you for the grand show broadcast from the Hippodrome Theater Saturday evening. As always your program was highly entertaining. As a Baltimore native I was especially pleased to hear our city described in such glowing terms. Unless one was raised over in the blue blood neighborhoods, (I wasn't) we tend to view our town and ourselves as "Joe six-pack, blue collar" people, too often neglectful of and having little appreciation for our own very rich history. Sometimes we need out-of-town folks to remind us of that.

Lisa F.
Baltimore, MD

I loved Baltimore, Lisa, and spent Sunday walking around downtown and dropped in at a fine old brownstone church, Grace and St. Peters Episcopal Church, on Park and Monument Streets, and was deeply moved by a magnificent choir and high mass, then sat by the water and ate a platter of Chincoteague oysters and a fine corn chowder and striped bass on a sunny day, and then got to visit the Enoch Pratt Free Library, which is my idea of what a library should be, and then saw the H.L. Mencken house on Hollins Street, which some fellow Mencken-lovers are planning to restore and furnish with the great man's stuff. He loved Baltimore and spent almost his entire life in that brick rowhouse on Union Square, an amazing prodigious writer with enormous influence in the Twenties and also a grand old German of Baltimore, devoted to beer and Beethoven and the good life, including the spacious freedom of his own mind. I plan to come back to Baltimore soon and poke around and then bring back the show. I spent most of a day at WYPR, a sweetheart of a radio station. I suppose Baltimore has its problems but it's an easy city for an out-of-towner to love.

Dear Garrison Keillor,
As an American publisher of various monographs related to the Nobel Institution(s) and its prizes, I was truly horrified (not at all amused) by this week's comedy segment (conversation between Al Gore and George Bush) which repeated made reference to Sweden. Kindly note (as bachelor from Lake W would surely know) that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in OSLO (like that's Norway) and not Sweden. Furthermore the peace prize award ceremony takes place in Oslo and not in Stockholm. I can now perceive why my many friends at the KVA in Stockholm find your radio broadcast less amusing than I usually do.

Best regards,

Neale W.
Sagamore Beach, MA

The mistake about the Peace Prize was made by a character in the sketch, George W. Bush, and was a deliberate mistake. Have you ever heard of this device being used in comedy? Do you have some sense of humor other than sarcasm? Your letter is a small world into a mind I am truly grateful not to know. If you were "horrified" by the sketch, how do you manage to live in this world of war and suffering and cruelty? Please devote your attention to some other show, my good man. I'd hate to think of you listening, breathing hard, taking everything literally.

Dear Sirs:
A friend told us today about one of Garrison's monologues in which he told about the life of Prudence Crandall and about his relationship to her. Prudence and her brother Hezekiah are buried in our cemetery in Elk Falls, KS, where the two had come to homestead 160 acres just west of town while in their 80's. She was quite a controversial character in this small rural community and was supported in her latter years by Mark Twain. We have a Kansas State Historical Marker in our town memorializing her many accomplishments as an early civil rights advocate. If there is any truth to the assertion that Garrison is a descendant of Prudence Crandall, I would certainly be interested to be able to document that fact.

Sincerely,

Steve F., Pres.
Friends of Elk Falls Association

My great-grandfather William Evans Keillor married Mary Jane Crandall up in New Brunswick before emigrating to Minnesota. She was the daughter of Joseph Crandall, a well-known Baptist minister in Canada, who was descended from John Crandall who was a close associate of Roger Williams, who founded the Rhode Island colony and who was a friend to the Indians and studied their languages and who broke with the arrogance and intolerance of the Puritans. And Prudence is likewise descended from John. Mark Twain was proud of her for having resisted racial bigotry in Connecticut. She opened a school for girls and when colored girls applied to the school, she accepted them even though she knew that the white parents would withdraw their children. So she went right ahead and operated a school for colored girls, until she was run out of town. We Keillors are proud of our tenuous association with tolerance and bravery, even if we may not always exemplify them ourselves, at least we're connected to people who did. I will put Elk Falls on my list of places to visit. It's my dream to ride a bike across Kansas some spring or fall and I'll make sure the route runs through Elk Falls.

Hi Mr. Keillor,
I am a Muslim on the Prairie and have been enjoying your show for almost 10 years now. Last year, you wished all your Jewish listeners a happy Rosh Hashanah and I was waiting and waiting for you to wish my community a Happy Ramadan (or Ramadan Mubarak, even), because the first day of Ramadan was the same day as Rosh Hashanah (as it was also this year) but the salutations never came! Mr. Keillor, Garrison, Sir, you have to know that you have a great Muslim American following! My cousin, who grew up in Pakistan, and his wife, who grew up in Malaysia, are HUGE fans. They keep talking about coming to the Twin Cities so they can see your show live. One of their daughter's first phrases was "hairie home chompanion"!

Anyway, I would LOVE it if you would wish your Muslim listeners Eid Mubarak, or Happy Eid, on your October 13th show, which coincidentally, is Eid — the holiday celebrating the end of the month of Ramadan.

Your Muslim fan on the Prairie,

Zainab

Ignorance, my good man, is no excuse but it is the only one I have — I didn't know it was also the beginning of Ramadan on Rosh Hashanah. But now I know that October 13 is the end of Ramadan, and so I will send out proper salutations. Perhaps you can suggest the proper tone we should strike — joyful, I assume — and maybe we'd even find someone to sing the Powdermilk Biscuit theme in Arabic We have a Christian host and a Jewish music director with strong Hindu leanings and we'd be happy to whoop it up for Eid. Bang on a pan or dance or do whatever needs to be done.

Post to the Host:
I noticed you mentioned on today's show (9/29) that you no longer drink alcohol. Is that true? As someone who has struggled with staying sober, I always feel in good company when public figures disclose that they are sober. I envision you as the type sitting at W.A. Frost, sipping a Tanqueray martini on the patio (as I have done one too many times), but maybe that is not so. I would enjoy it if you could elaborate on your experiences. Thank you.

Steve
St. Paul

It's not a very interesting story, Steve. I just stopped one day about five years ago while on a cruise to Alaska with my family. Didn't mention it to anybody, just decided, "Whoa. You've done this long enough." One of those spasms of reform that we old Sanctified Brethren go in for. I loved alcohol and enjoyed martinis especially and also Italian red wine, Scotch and bourbon, and gin and tonic, but a person gets tired of wondering if he is drinking too much and so you just knock it off. It's easy to not drink so long as you don't drink. You simply make the decision to resume so enormous that you don't quite have the strength for it. But I don't like to talk about it. My beloved old editor Roger Angell once said to me, over martinis, "Whatever you do, don't stop drinking." He was tired of listening to his recovering pals. I am happy to mix drinks for anybody and I keep good stuff around, I just don't take any myself. But when I turn 70, I plan to get back to it.

The appearance of Martin Sheen on Saturday's show and especially his rendition of "How Can I Keep From Singing" (Listen) brought in a number of letters from listeners. Anna wrote: "I was driving home through the beautiful rolling hills in Northwestern Illinois and when Martin Sheen chanted the hymn of lamentations, I was profoundly moved and had to park off the roadway to assimilate this extremely moving moment. He honored the people of Burma and their struggles and made us all aware through his song to value freedom and those who are dying to fight for theirs."

And Anne G. wrote: "I was truly moved by his hymn singing and his dedication to the cause of peace."

Ruth O. wrote: "It was so nice to hear Martin Sheen tell his story, and how he got started in social justice. I was moved to tears by his heartfelt singing of that beautiful hymn."

And Peggy P. up in British Columbia wrote: "I heard Martin Sheen singing 'I Cannot Keep From Singing' on your show and was transfixed. It had such a haunting beauty, and his singing had such a honest simplicity, it was a perfect match (especially not being overpowered by musical accompaniment). I was so happy to listen to the rebroadcast to hear his heart-stirring rendition again."

It certainly was a stirring moment. There was a torrent of applause and then Maria Jette came onstage with tears in her eyes afterward to sing her song, and so we had to exchange a few inane remarks, and I had to remind myself NOT to say that I was frankly a little sick of the song having heard Martin rehearse it sixty times that afternoon in his dressing room. He is a great guy, though, and I was glad for him having that big moment. Of course when a megastar like him comes on the show, it's our obligation to harass him a little and make fun of his hair and write dumb stuff for him to do ("Captain Ahab don't want rehab") but in the end Mr. Sheen shone and bravo for him.

Post to the Host:
I just finished Pontoon and enjoyed it immensely. My husband and I saw your one man show this past year when you came to Columbus, Ohio (loved that as well). The book seems to be based on that show. When did you decide to write the book? Sort of like the chicken and the egg question. Which came first? Or was it somewhere in the middle? Just curious how the creative process works.

Michelle M.
Westerville, OH

Pontoon started with a story on the radio show years ago about 26 Lutheran ministers piling onto an 18-foot pontoon boat, which people enjoyed, and so I worked it up into a longer monologue, which I did in the one-man dog-and-pony show. The monologue grew and grew until it got to be 90 minutes long and then it dawned on me that it was all in my head and I had no record of it at all. Also, the stage version, while it worked well onstage, was missing the sort of shading and interior voices that could only be done in prose fiction form. So I started writing it out as a story and found it satisfying to flesh out the character of Evelyn and her lover Raoul and her daughter Barbara and her son Kyle. I had to rein it in lest it turn into a soapy epic — I love that short comic form, maybe because I was a big fan of Wodehouse back in junior high school. But that, in a nutshell, is how the book came to be.