Post to the Host
GK responds to queries on topics from childbearing to potato salad, with a little bookstore fetish in between.

Send your own post to the host.
Here's your chance to ask GK your most pressing questions—about the writing life, the radio life, Lake Wobegon, Guy Noir, whatever you like. Also, feel free to send feedback about the show. Honest comments and criticism are always welcome!

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Could you please give me some advice on writing a love letter? This Tuesday is my husband's birthday, and this year (as in all previous years), I am giving him tools. He is always appreciative of them, and the staid engineer inside of him always sees to their efficient use and excellent care. But this time, that gift just seems an insufficient substitute for what I truly want to express to him.

The problem is that compliments generally make him uncomfortable, so perhaps a love letter is simply a selfish endeavor resulting from the hormones of early pregnancy. What do you think?

B.L.
Charlotte

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Maybe what your engineer dislikes about compliments is their verobosity. Likely he is a man of few words who likes words to count for something. So don't gush. You could write: "I love you more than you know and I am so happy to be having your baby." If he isn't moved by that, then kick him to see if he has reflexes.

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Post to the Host:
Hello, Mr. Keillor. I'm the pastor of First Lutheran Church in Sauk Centre. I just started reading your latest novel, Liberty, and discovered that on page 17, the name of our fair town is mentioned, but it is misspelled as Sauk Center. I don't know how many other Mainstreeters are fans, or how upset they will be when they see the mistake, or what they might do if they are upset. Maybe a correction could be made in future printings, or when the book comes out in paperback.

Kevin W. Born
Sauk Centre

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It's good to hear from you, Pastor Born, and I'm glad you brought this up. I really am. I've been meaning to organize a campaign to Get Sauk Centre Centered and what with other things I haven't done it but now I am. In Minnesota, as you know, we have Le Center and we have Dodge Center, and those two fine towns serve as a reminder to our young people that we are in the U.S. of A. and not in the English Midlands or in Normandy. What possessed the founders of your town to give it that spelling, I think we can guess — it's the same impulse that drives someone to take an ordinary gift shop and call it Ye Olde Curiosities Shoppe, the urge to set oneself apart and a little above the hoi polloi, but as a Lutheran, aren't you supposed to stand up for humility and the simple rules of American spelling? I realize there were French people in your area at one time but they've left now and can't we get over it? Do people in S.C. want us to pronounce the name SOWK — SAHN-TRE? How would you feel if, in Minneapolis, they decided to take Central Avenue and turn it into Le Boulevard de Centrale? I hope you wouldn't go along with that. I love your town. I have stayed at the Palmer House, an excellent hotel, and admired the fabulous facade and marquee of the Main Street Theater (or is it Theatre), and of course I have especially admired the way in which the town took its renegade native son Sinclair Lewis, who enjoyed an unhappy childhood there and who punished the town for all he was worth in his 1920 novel Main Street, and after his death has made him into a civic asset and a tourist attraction. That is true entrepreneurship.

And while I'm on the subject, what's with First Lutheran Church? That strikes me as rather unLutheran, to claim preeminence among Lutheran churches in the area. It seems to me that true Lutherans would take the name Sixth Lutheran Church, even if there weren't five others, as a sign of humility. Let's talk.

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Post to the Host:
We LOVED the joke show last year, and do not want to miss it this year. Could you tell me the date and venue of that particular show, please?

Thanks,
Tracy

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I wish I could, Tracy. The Joke Show is, as always, a work in progress, and I haven't checked lately with our Joke Show Czar, Ella Schovanec, but I believe she is still rounding up material. Her office is down the hall from mine and I do not hear her laughing, so I guess the pickings are slim. With the Joke Show, we are striving to keep alive something that is pretty rare, the out and out Joke, the classic "Did you hear about the" type of joke, and we only want to do new ones, and there just aren't that many. Mr. Bush, bless his heart, inspired a lot of them, as did Mr. Bill Clinton, but I don't see that Mr. Obama will, and I don't see that our banking crisis or impending depression have inspired any, but we remain alert. If there is a joke show this season, it'll probably come in early May. Meanwhile you can send any funny ones to Ella through this form.

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Dear Mr. Keillor,
My boyfriend, born and raised in France, is as inexpressive as a rock, as unromantic as concrete. Three years and not one "I love you." I'm starting to wonder if he's actually a Norwegian Lutheran bachelor from Lake Wobegon. Do Norwegian bachelors have emotions? Is there any hope that my Norwegian bachelor from France will someday be capable of emotional connections? He seems to view being in a relationship as a threat to his masculinity. Could you please share your wisdom on how to maintain a meaningful relationship with a Norwegian bachelor?

N. from Seattle

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I've never been in a relationship with a Norwegian bachelor, N., and the thought of it is not pleasant. I have to urge you to move on and find someone else. Yes, Norwegian bachelors are capable of emotional connections, but the same rules apply to them as to anyone else — if you cannot express your affections in some way, then the object of your affections is going to get smaller and smaller. Meaning, she will leave. If the relationship is so one-sided that one person is doing all the emoting and the other is silently soaking it up, then this needs to change. Men may avoid emotional expression due to deep-seated cultural imprinting — Strength = Silence — and to conceal our sentimentality and to avoid the terrible pain of loss. We all, men and women, feel a powerful responsibility to keep things afloat, do the day's business, dig the potatoes, keep chugging, and that is our emotional flywheel that keeps us upright, and we defend ourselves against being dragged down by raw feeling which, we know, can be overwhelming. Especially the pain of loss, of betrayal or of false love, unrequited love, love that is unequal or unreturned, and to guard against that searing pain, the heart may choose to distance itself from the beloved. But there is a price to be paid for distance, and he should pay it, not you.

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Post to the Host:
Were you aware that in most of the country children play 'Duck duck goose' but that in Minnesota they play 'Duck duck gray duck'? I discovered this almost 20 years ago and have always wondered how this great schism came about. Any insights?

Shannon W.
Seattle

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I grew up with "Duck, Duck, Gray Duck" but I've heard my daughter play "Duck, Duck, Goose" and wonder if maybe the Goose version isn't the book version and maybe Montessori teachers learn that one and that's become the official one for daycare usage, and the Gray Duck was the folk version passed from one generation of children to another.

Children these days are much more under adult influence than we were back in the day, Shannon. We played games that our elders were barely aware of and passed on childlore that today, I'm afraid, are no longer part of childhood. But who knows? My daughter goes off upstairs with her friends and I can hear them laughing up there and then suddenly there is quiet, intense silence, and time passes, and when they come down, I say, "What were you doing?" And the answer, as it always used to be and always will be, is "Nothing."

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Dear Mr. Keillor,
There's something that disturbs me very much about your show. Seems like older women are portrayed as ugly and undesirable while it is always the younger women who are considered sexy. I just heard your Valentine's Day segment and....it made me sad. I'm middle-aged and don't consider myself to be unattractive, but I still feel that men should really be aware of just how much this kind of negative
stereotyping hurts women. It's not just on your show, of course — it's everywhere. Seems like our society is set up for older men to be depicted as wise and knowing, whereas older women are trashed as value-less and ugly, always ditched for the younger, less experienced ones. This message pervades psyches everywhere...from the magazine racks to the dating games — and when you consider the damage it does, there's nothing funny about it. Have you ever stopped to think about how unfair that is — and what it does to a woman's sense of herself — especially as she grows older?

Promoting superficial values isn't helping anyone....including the men who miss out on having lifetime partners who grow wise and knowing along with them.

Please know that it hurts older women to be made the butt of 'ugly' and 'old' jokes, especially on Valentine's Day.

Heidi-Jane S.
San Francisco, CA

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You may be right, Heidi-Jane, and if I think back on the Valentine's show, I suppose you may be referring to the lady who accosted Guy Noir in the bar and whom he rejected in favor of a young woman. But the young woman then rejected him. And I think that Guy is pretty consistently rejected by women, sometimes rather pointedly: it's the story of his life. Balanced against whatever slights you heard on the show, you must consider Heather Masse's rendition of a parody of John Lennon's "Imagine" — "Imagine you did housework/it's easy if you try/Imagine you cleaned bathrooms/and were that sort of guy" which got a big reaction from the theater audience, especially the women. The same guy wrote that as wrote Guy Noir — me —and as an older guy, I think I've been pretty hard on my own kind. But comedy does deal in stereotypes, no doubt about it, and the attractiveness of youth is a staple of comedy. Which suggests that it is an attitude buried deep in our culture and it's not going to go away. It's probably tied to our survival instincts — we prefer youth because therein lies the future of the species. It sure doesn't lie with guys my age.

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Post to the Host:
Hello. In your recent show, GK said that Buddy Holly was alive and living in New York. All bio's say that he is no longer with us and passed away in the plane crash. Please inform me of the correct truth.

Thank you,
Thad

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I am sticking to my story, Thad, no matter what the biographers say. They have been wrong before. I ran into Buddy Holly in New York in December and didn't recognize him at first because he doesn't have those big black hornrims anymore — he had Lasik surgery and doesn't need glasses — and he's put on some weight since 1959. He's 72 and in good shape for the shape he's in and retired from his pastorate two years ago. After the plane crash, he went back to the Church of Christ and went to Abilene Christian and got his degree and he's been pastor of Manhattan Church of Christ, a little church on W. 12th Street. Church of Christ is a pretty tiny minority in New York City, so he goes unnoticed — anybody who was a Buddy Holly fan is still in mourning for him, and members of the Church of Christ tended not to be rocknrollers, so he's as anonymous as can be, and he goes by the name of the Rev. Charles Holley which is spelled with an E, and so his secret is safe. He was sorry about the guy who died in the crash.
A guitarist named Elwyn Baker who was a dead-ringer for Buddy and when Buddy got the offer to go on tour in the Midwest in the dead of winter, he said "No way" and called up Elwyn and they agreed on a 50-50 split, and that's the truth. Elwyn was also Church of Christ and he was going to be a minister and he wanted a last fling as a rocknroll star and that's how he died. Doing what he wanted to do. And Buddy was shocked to read his own obituary in the papers, of course, and he was going to tell people that he was still alive but he was embarrassed about the dishonesty of sending a stand-in and then he was sort of amazed at what a commotion his death caused and teenagers weeping and making pilgrimages to the crash site and so on, and then as he thought about it, his death to him seemed like a sign from heaven that he should give his life to the Lord, which he's done. And he doesn't sing these songs anymore.

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To the Host:
Which brand of glasses was Garrison Keillor wearing when he hosted the Moth Ball? I'd like a pair myself, or one like them.

Steven
Madison, WI

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Black hornrims, Steven, the style of glasses that said "intellectual" back in the Fifties at Anoka High School. On the frame it says "MODO" and "made in Italy" but I bought them at Lenscrafters in a shopping mall in Roseville, north of St. Paul.

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Mr. Keillor,
I am a freshman at Kellogg (Idaho) High School, and I am currently researching for an essay on Studs Terkel, the famed oral interviewer, for National History Day. To show that he was influential in history, I am trying to argue that he influenced history both by recording it from many perspectives, but also showing others how to do so.

I was wondering if you would have a position on these arguments for Terkel's influence, and if you believe that Terkel had an influence on you or your style of interviewing/hosting.

Thank you for your time,
Silas D.

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I don't think Studs felt that he influenced history. He felt he was paddling upstream, a left-wing Chicago radio guy who loved opera and never drove a car and liked to shoot the breeze with the hoi polloi — he found himself in a freeway world where history was made by a few empty suits and the radio was full of blather and music that said nuttin' and people were so damn busy they didn't have time to sit down and have a drink. But he loved what he loved, stood up for it steadfastly, and enjoyed an old man's privilege of bitching about lousy overpriced hotels and the decline of the American hotdog, abusing the umpire, questioning authority in general, yelling at the TV, and tossing out little lectures on history whenever people sat still. Influential? I don't know. But I like your thesis, Silas, and you should go with it. The old man would be tickled pink. I can't claim that Studs influenced me since I'm not the egalitarian guy he was, nor so political or articulate. I'm a fallen fundamentalist from Minnesota and he was a New York Jew who blossomed in the Windy City and became a local fixture and then a sort of national hero, a lefty grandpa with a thousand opinions who knew whereof he spoke. He was irrepressible and I am very repressible. Repression is my middle name. Ira Glass is the guy who Studs influenced and you could draw a nice line from the old guy to This American Life. And that's all the help you get from me, kid. I'm out of here.

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