Post to the Host:
Enjoyed the map of Lake Wobegon on the cover of PONTOON but couldn't find the "Side Track Tap".

Matt R.
Sturgis, MI

First of all, it's not the worst thing to be unable to find the SideTrack Tap, Matt. You go in there, it's dim, you sit at the bar and inhale some cigar smoke and listen to Lefty Frizzell sing "I Never Go Around Mirrors" and the Grain Belt and Hamm's signs are blinking, it's not too long before you have a Wendy's beer and a shot glass of Jim Beam in front of you and some pork rinds and you are feeling mellow and then before you know it you've told Wally all about your sad life and you've slid off the barstool and you're careening toward the men's room and Patsy Cline is singing "I Fall to Pieces" and you're singing along — how do you know the words? You were a Mozart and Bach guy who never missed a performance of the St. Matthew Passion and listened to "The Marriage of Figaro" in your car, and now you're just a common drunk. That's why it's just as well if you drive on by the place and don't go in.
As for the cover of the novel, a terrific artist named Rodica Prato drew it who is from Rumania and lives in New York and she tried to make a work of art out of that jumble of buildings on Main Street and placed them in a tasteful manner and I suppose it was good taste on her part that omitted the Side Track. At any rate, most Wobegonians were delighted by the omission, and the patrons of the Side Track don't read novels, so no harm was done.

Here's a note we received from Col. Rex J. Walheim about life aboard the Space Shutle Atlantis. And if that weren't enough outer space fun for you, you can also hear the wake up call received by Commander Steve Frick on day three of the most recent Atlantis mission.

Saturday, Feb 16, 2008

Dear Garrison,
Greetings from the Space Shuttle Atlantis! My name is Rex Walheim, and I am an astronaut currently in orbit. We are docked to the International Space Station on a mission to do a little construction work. We brought up a brand new state-of-the-art European Laboratory Module called Columbus. We completed three space walks, and now have the new module firmly attached to the Station. We are still in the process of activating it, and when it is ready, it will provide scientists with valuable data for years to come.

Life up here in space is an amazing adventure, but it takes a little getting used to. For one thing, the speed we are traveling is amazing. We are going 17,500 miles per hour, orbiting the entire Earth about every 90 minutes. That means that each daylight period only lasts 45 minutes, and then you head behind the Earth into a 45 minute nighttime. This process repeats over and over for 16 sunrises and sunsets during an Earth day. The old expression your mom told you to "Play outside, but be back before it gets dark" would keep our leash a little shorter up here. And of course if you come back inside 45 minutes late, the sun has already come up again and now you are in trouble for staying out "all night."

This type of speed can come in quite handy. Traveling at about 5 miles a second, St. Paul is only about 6 minutes from the beaches of Florida. If anyone is having trouble selling their houses up there, maybe they could advertise that they are minutes from the beach (with proper transportation).

The views up here are amazing. We can see for about a thousand miles in any direction. One of my favorite views is northern Africa and the Middle East. It is usually clear there and looks very peaceful as the countries blend together. Down in the tropical regions, the vivid blue of the ocean is gorgeous. Of course there is nothing better for me than flying over our country and seeing my home state of California from space. On my last space walk we came up over the California coast on a crystal clear day, and I could see from Oregon to Los Angeles.

Our combined crew up here today is ten people from four countries (US, Germany, France, and Russia). We are in an isolated outpost on today's frontier. We work together, live together, laugh together and solve problems together as we build one of the most complicated engineering projects ever attempted, the International Space Station. Thousands more on the ground in sixteen countries toil ceaselessly to make this possible. If the people of Earth ever need an example of how countries can work together in difficult circumstances, they just need to look up in the night sky as the International Space Station sails high above, and think fondly of the people of the Earth who are up here reaching out together beyond our beautiful planet.

Sincerely,
Rex Walheim

Post to the Host:
I was dismayed to hear the student in your Dusty & Lefty skit ask, "Where's your hats?". Where were the English majors on your staff when this script was written? Need I point out to you that "where's" is a contraction of "where is", and that the proper form of be for this sentence would have been "are", given that "hats" is plural? Please do not contribute to the further degradation of the English language.

Carl E.
Matthews, NC

You is right about that, for sure, and you knows it. Dang. We been nabbed again.

Garrison:
I'm a colorblind professional platform speaker and communication skills coach. I went exclusively to all red socks when I turned 60 (I'm 63). the Sock Company out of New Jersey can no longer provide me with red socks. Do you have a source, suggestions? Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Love your work!

Thank you,
Howard B. , Jr.

Red socks have all but vanished from the retail world. I think that the Thomas Pink shirt shops sell them. The last batch I bought were from Illums, the big department store in Copenhagen. I was there last July and walked through and saw a burst of red in men's wear and bought twenty pair. Now I wish I'd bought out all their stock.

Post to the Host:
I just heard your latest show and you mentioned that Bisquick is now a sponsor. How do the folks at Powdermilk Biscuits feel about this? Are they pulling their sponsorship from the first part of the program?
And, most importantly, which product do you think makes the best biscuits? Maybe a taste test is in order at the local Fire Department Pancake Breakfast.

Liz P.
Chatham NJ

I don't give a rip how the Powdermilk people feel about it. They are relatives of mine, on the Powell side, and their product, frankly, is behind the times — Bisquick is Heart Smart, no cholesterol, zero grams trans fats — and nobody has the faintest idea what's in Powdermilk. That branch of the family made a nice peanut brittle at one time but their flour products are nothing to write home about.
Pull their sponsorship? I wish they would. They haven't paid us a sou in years. We carry them out of sympathy and because I have elderly relatives who would be hurt to see them go. Myself, I'd be tickled pink.
Powdermilk makes a decent biscuit if you like your biscuits heavy, but don't use them to make pancakes. One stack and you'll be immobile for the rest of the morning.

Dear Mr Keillor,
My husband died three weeks ago today, and I want you to know that your stories touched our family very deeply. When my ten-year-old son and I drove to the hospital two hours away to visit my husband, we would listen to your audio recordings, which were very comforting. Now that my husband has passed, my son requests that I play these audiobooks at bedtime. Your voice has carried us through some very tough times. So, with great appreciation, I wish you well.

Wendy

I am very sorry about this dark passage you're having to navigate, and wish you well as you continue, and I'm glad the stories could be a distraction for you and your boy. Sometimes the stories strike me as rather dark and I wonder if I am simply unloading some sorrows of my own on the unsuspecting world, but if a ten-year-old boy enjoys hearing them, then that's good enough. And if they put him to sleep, all the better.

Post to the Host:
Is your Andy Stein the same Andy Stein who contributed impressively, back in the seventies, to The Marshall Tucker Band, Commander Cody, David Bromberg and others? By the way I had the distinct honor of sitting in the front row of your show for the 125th birthday of Yellowstone National Park at Old Faithful. Shared a plethora of cocktails with you folks afterward at the Mezzanine Bar... I still smile when I think of it.

Rev. C.E. A.
Turney, MO

It's the very same one, sir. He was a charter member of Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen back then, a group that made a big splash in the rocknroll world singing C&W doper songs and doing boogie-woogie, and Mr. Stein was the saxophonist/fiddler with the big Jewish Afro. As for the Yellowstone broadcast, what I remember was the enormous bison who parked himself next to the satellite dish behind the lodge where we performed, and when our engineer asked a park ranger what we could do about it, the ranger said, "All you can do with bison is just wait for them to move." I also remember the battalion of dedicated "geyser gazers" who camped out at Yellowstone every summer and carried walkie-talkies to inform the others of which geysers seemed likely to erupt soon. They had an RV command post, T-shirts, a newsletter, and comprised a small cohesive society, all based on their interest in hot water bursting up out of the earth. I don't recall the Mezzanine Bar or a plethora of drinks, but you're entitled to your memories.

Post to the Host:
I am very interested in hearing your response to Stephen Colbert referring to you as "the whitest man in America" (watch) last week after Super Tuesday election results were in from MN.

Carole H.
La Grande, OR

A man accepts whatever superlatives come his way. I used to be the tallest radio humorist in America and now I get to be the whitest man. Okay. Somebody gets to be the blackest and I get to be the whitest. That Tuesday night, I stood in line outside Ramsey Junior High in St. Paul to cast my preference ballot for Senator Obama and it was COLD out there. The people around me looked white as sheets and I suppose I was too. Cold will do that to you.

Hi GK,
We listen to your show weekly via satellite and loved your live performance when you played Shea's in Buffalo in Dec. 2007. But how come you don't ever come up to Canada? Trouble crossing the border with the immigration officials? Did you do something heinous up here in your youth and have been barred from the Country? We'd love to see you visit Toronto for a show sometime.

Greg T.
Toronto

It would seem odd to me to do a show in Canada, for some reason. The last time I did one (in Vancouver), I felt awfully self-conscious about being an American, which I don't feel in Europe when we've done shows there. I don't know why this is — I feel perfectly at home in the U.K. and in Canada I feel like an interloper. And, yes, the immigration crossing was miserable. But the real reason is that it felt odd to play there. And when the CBC declined to broadcast the show, on grounds that it didn't contain enough Canadian content, I felt that I'd be better off going around the States.

GK.
Every evening, i get into the peace of my car and drive for two hours and listen for the Praire Home Companion. I think you once hinted that, maybe, Dolly Parton would be on the show. I just don't wanna miss anything.

James O.
Oklahoma City

We've been angling to get Dolly on the show ever since forever. Chet Atkins was a big admirer of hers and we tried to get her through him, and Stevie Beck the Queen of the Autoharp, who is a Dolly fan, tried, and someday we will welcome her to the show. She can sing anything she wants to sing and I'll write her a part in a Guy Noir script. We'll even give her a dressing room with a mirror and little light bulbs around it.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
I was really disappointed by your positive treatment of Ronald Reagan on February 6th on Writer's Almanac. Reagan ranks among the two or three worst presidents in American history. His notable "accomplishments": the Iran-Contra Scandal, the funding of Saddam Hussein, the tripling of our National Debt, and increasing the gap between the rich and poor.

I would have been much more pleased by hearing more about Tom Brokaw, who shares the same birthday, but who got one sentence from you.

Sincerely,
S.

The little spritz on Mr. Reagan didn't try to rank him as a president, only to give some novelistic details about his life — his early start in radio, his start in movies, his fondness for jellybeans, and so forth. What some might call trivia, but if you were a novelist writing about the man, you'd treasure facts like that. We did something similar on James Joyce, and Lincoln, and Washington. No judgments implied. Sorry we disappointed you.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I work at the library, a fantastic job for a college student. I get paid to sit and read books—I'm currently immersed in Anna Karenina and have read every Jane Austen book for the third time while sitting at this desk. I love romance novels, but I'm getting frustrated with love. I've been in deep like with a man, but never in love. Does love really happen like Jane Austen says it does? Does my Mr. Darcy exist? Or, could it be, that because I've been reading so many romance novels that my idea of love is skewed?

My last three interests all left to do adventurous things. One is riding his bicycle from Alaska to Central America, the other moved to Australia, and the most recent started working for the AIDS/HIV initiative in Liberia. Now, I am the adventurous sort and love to take risks. But is there something wrong with me that I can't even date someone who isn't leaving for another country?

Evie J.
Vermillion, SD

Three boyfriends left town on account of you, Evie, and this tells me there is some intensity going on. I try to look at this from the guy's perspective, dating a woman who has just immersed herself in Jane Austen, and I can see her leaning across the table toward me and asking if I believe in the power of goodness and expecting an answer, and suddenly a long bike ride starts to look good.

I asked a woman on the PHC staff and she says: "First off, she should stop looking. In my experience, when I was actively looking for Mr.Right, it seemed the worst guys would come out of the woodwork. She just has to be patient. Of course, no single person actually wants to hear this. To meet guys, she should ask her friends and family. If it's someone your friend knows and likes, there is a good chance you will like them too. Dear Abby says the best place to meet single men is at the hardware store on a Friday night. And for goodness sake, she should put the romance novels down. It's too easy to want to believe that life could be like that. Life is messy, people are flawed. She has to lower her expectations to at least the realm of human proportions or no man will be good enough. And it would be a pity that while she's waiting for Mr. Perfect, she misses out on Mr.Perfect For Her. That's my two cents."

Dear Garrison,
I've been a devoted listener to PHC since the early 1990's, and I was wondering how you feel the show has changed over the years, especially the show of today, versus the show of the first decade. Is it still the same show?

Peter C.
East Brunswick, NJ

In the first decade, the show booked mostly Minnesota musicians and there were no actors. My voice was higher and my accent was pronounced and here's a terrible self-consciousness evident, which makes it painful for me to listen to tapes of the early shows, so I don't, so I don't know how to answer your question. The big difference, for me, is that the early show was written on a typewriter and now we use laptop computers. But we don't look back. And we don't look too far forward.

It'll be interesting someday if some ambitious young academic decides to write the history of the show and answer your question. I'll be an old man and I'll read it with great interest.

Post to the Host:
I just finished Wobegon Boy and Pontoon (buy now), and as fledgling Dead Head, I couldn't help but get excited over the Jerry Garcia/Grateful Dead references in these books. I began to wonder, are you, Mr. Keillor, a Dead Head? And if so, any favorite shows or songs? Keep up the good work.

Connor G.
Apple Valley, MN

I loved their album "American Beauty" which has "Attics of My Life" and "Ripple" and "Brokedown Palace" on it, all of which I've sung (or tried to sing) on the show, but that album is not what any Deadhead would consider typical of them, so I probably am not a head, maybe just a Deadbeat. And I never tried LSD, the thought of which terrified me then and now, and marijuana just didn't appeal to me — if you hung around dopers as I did back in the ''70s, you were sort of impressed by the stupidity of being stoned, and I personally had no need of being any stupider than I already was. So I am a fan of some of their less Deadly work. Sort of like with Dylan — I like his pop stuff more than the Dylanesque.

1. Teaching children to read is a basic moral responsibility of our society and it is not acceptable that 27% of Minnesota fourth-graders seem to be in danger of growing up functionally illiterate.
2. The whole-language approach does not work for all children — some children are much better served by phonics (my child included) — and educational poobahs who have a big personal stake in the prevailing whole-language philosophy are not serving my child and other children like her.
3. Democrats who throw away No Child Left Behind and the Reading First program because they are a legacy of the Current Occupant, even though there is merit to the idea of accountability by way of testing, are putting politics ahead of the real needs of children. The interests of teachers' unions and the interests of schoolchildren are not always synonymous. And when you place yourself between parents and their children, you are in a dangerous place. Parents are ferocious in advocating for their children.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
I have been an avid listener of the show since the late '70s and know how much writing you do. Do you ever get sick and tired of writing?
It would seem that at some point the spring would dry up and you would want to run as far away from a pad, pencil and laptop as you could.

Randy S.
Clermont, FL

The best time to write is first thing in the morning, and you simply plow in and go as long as you can, and then take a coffee break, and resume. When the spring of inspiration dries up, usually sometime in the early afternoon, one simply shifts over to editing, which is an unending job and one with its own pleasures, and when that begins to fade, it's time to close up shop. But now that I'm taking a break from alcohol, evenings are now available, so sometimes the shop reopens. As one heads toward the far turn of one's career, everything seems more urgent and you try to keep pushing. Books wait to be written, shows stretch out from here to 2010, and then there is the sonnet collection to finish. The play. And so forth. The real secret to keeping up your enthusiasm is to write in as many genres and forms as possible. Variety is better than vacation.

Greetings:
A friend of mine says she is booked to see you in Chico, CA on Valentine's Day. But Chico, fine town that it is, is not listed on the APHC Schedule. Is she deluded or do you still have a day job and are going there in another capacity?

Cordially,
Ann W.
Birmingham, England

A few years ago, Ann, I discovered the intense pleasure of standing in front of an audience and telling stories for ninety minutes, and I do that now and then, to keep in shape and also to meet people who listen to the show (which I myself don't get to do). And most of the time they pay me to do this. I occasionally get carried away and go for two hours or more, which can be a problem for older men in the audience, but it's good to stretch out. And it's hard work. As for Chico, it's up beyond Sacramento, in an agricultural part of California where they grow things on trees and bushes, and I once stayed there in a modest old shotgun-style house, white frame, with several screened porches on it, and woke up hearing birds and got dressed and went off to a breakfast somebody had arranged with the poet Gary Snyder and the writer John McPhee, two heroes of mine at one breakfast table. Have you read John McPhee? Everything he writes is golden, though his books on geology can be slow going, and I'd especially recommend "Oranges" and "The Crofter and the Laird," though everything is superb.

Mr. Keillor,
I'm a nearly 6-foot-tall, slim, not unattractive, yet never married, former English major turned massage therapist. Oh, I've had relationships, but I guess never the right one. Did I mention that I turned a certain age last year?

So, my question is this. As a lifelong shy person, what should I do to alleviate my Midwestern city apartment-dwelling isolation? I'm so lonely and confused that I actually attended my first Unitarian church service last Sunday.

I love music, especially what they call roots and Americana, PBS, good books and your show, which I'm listening to alone on Saturday night. Advice columnist types always recommend volunteer work. What would you suggest?

Stephany B.
St. Louis, MO

A single woman I know recommends meetup.com which is not a dating service but simply a place where you can sign up to meet persons of similar interests — say, a skiing group, or a group interested in independent film, or roots music — and maybe you meet people you like, maybe not, maybe you're lovestruck, or not, but at least you're out and about and in the swim and talking. I think that love comes from conversation and conversation has to be practiced. Which is not easy for us shy persons, but we must force ourselves out of the shell of self-pity and into normal playful connections with good-hearted people.

And people who share some interests are where you should make connections. It really helps if partners have mutual enthusiasms and can plunge into something together whole-heartedly — go off square-dancing or skiing or campaigning or listening to music you love.

When you're a teenager you're more likely to be moonstruck and go head over heels for the idealized stranger across the crowded room but a mature experienced woman is more likely to be drawn to someone because she likes him and enjoys his company, a friendship out of which a romance blossoms. Massage therapy, like writing fiction, is a solitary line of work, so you need to force yourself out of the routine and build a social life, otherwise you will wake up having missed out on much too much of the richness and beauty of life. There is time. Get out of your apartment and into the pool. Enjoy the mission.

P.S. Your phrase "not unattractive" is probably midwestern self-deprecation but you should address this, for the sake of your own self-esteem. Don't be non-unattractive, darling. Be beautiful. In your own heart, be beautiful, and also take a good hard look at the hair situation, the clothes closet, the whole deal. We shy persons tend to live in our own heads and if we intend to get out and mingle and connect to people, we have to look in the mirror and — "Whoa. What's with the ponytail?"

Post to the Host:
What is the origin of the song "The Winter is Long" sung by GK and Becky Schlegel? I though it was very pretty, but also thought I had heard a similar tune before.

Dean B.
Topeka

Your keen ear detected an old English folk song, "Waly Waly," or "The Water Is Wide," which goes "The water is wide, I cannot get over, and neither have I wings to fly. Give me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row, my love and I." A perfect song for Becky's delicate beautiful twisting soprano, so I changed it to "The winter is long, it will never be over" and you can find it in the archives.

Hi,
I grew up in St. Paul and live out in Portland and am wondering, WHY do people bother making potato salad with the mayo and all that when the German potato salad is clearly superior (and has bacon!!!)?

your avid listener,
Lynn

German potato salad is an interesting novelty, served warm, somewhat sour, a good winter dish, but in the summer you want the real thing, with mayo, chopped egg, some mustard, dill, and chopped scallions. It's worth all the work that goes into it and it elevates the humble potato to ambrosial heights and it is a staple of the potluck family picnic. But you have to make it at home, yourself, and not try to foist off on us a tub of commercial glop from a convenience store. We might be too polite to point out the problem but we would remember it for a long time.