Post to the Host:
My dad came from St Rosa, MN so I know some of 'Lake Wobegon' country. I have often wondered why the strong German Catholic culture of that area was not featured/storified in your work, as opposed to the Norwegian Lutheran culture.

Jim H.
Minneapolis

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I lived in St. Cloud and Freeport for about four years, Jim, and I found the German Catholics closed off to outsiders. I lived in a farmhouse (cheap rent, beautiful landscape, no interruptions, you could write all day and all night) in a predominantly German Catholic area — New Munich just to the south — and found it hard to engage people even in ordinary conversation. I could understand reticence, of course, and even suspicion, but I simply came to think of it as an alien culture, hostile to people like me. I had a few Catholic friends, and a friend who was a priest and who had literary interests and a fine sense of humor, but I had no sense of confidence telling stories about Catholics. And the great novellist and short-story writer J.F. Powers had preempted the field with his "Prince of Darkness" and "Morte D'Urban" which I studied in college. He was a favorite writer of mine, and last Monday I visited his grave at St. John's cemetery. Telling stories about German Catholics with Powers listening to the show would've scared me to death. He did not tolerate fools gladly and I had no wish to be one of them.

Post to the Host:
How on earth did you get into writing what you do and A Prairie Home Companion? I am a writer (young-ish and unproduced). Recently, I left New York City for the farm. In the city I wrote of lofty themes to please myself. But on the farm, my aim is to entertain my fellow farmhands or be scorned. While at grad school I learned writing, on the farm I learned the more difficult and humble art of story telling. I was curious as to how you started out and do you think of yourself as a story teller?

Stella Ragsdale
Edgartown MA

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I'm not a storyteller, Stella, but I impersonate one and that is almost as good. Storytelling is an intimate art, practiced between people who know each other well, and I've known some great ones, a sculptor named Joe O'Connell and my great-uncle Lew Powell and the late Chet Atkins. Chet was a true storyteller. He blanched at the thought of doing it onstage, but when he drove you around in his pickup truck, he'd tell a whole string of stories, some of them ribald, about Nashville stars and he'd imitated their voices beautifully and he embroidered the stories beautifully and, listening to him, I just sat and laughed and wished we'd drive forever. I don't have that gift. What I do have is chutzpah, to stand up in front of an audience and take them into my confidence and try to tell a story, which often as not turns into an essay instead. But sometimes it hits on all two cylinders. I started out, as you did, writing lofty things and then, out of curiosity, got started as a performer, and that, as you know, is a whole other game. The difference between high lit and performance is that high-lit writers can imagine that their readers are as fascinated as they are. In performance, you can see the audience and that is a sobering sight. There is nothing so scary as seeing an audience look off toward the wings, hoping that someone else comes out soon and does something interesting.

Post to the Host:
I just wanted to send a message out to you about the strange way I heard parts of your show recently. I am stationed with the Illinois National Guard in Afghanistan. While on duty I noticed my radio picking up some strange interference. Then I heard the unquestionable sound of your voice. It was then I realized that somehow my communication system was picking up a broadcast of your show. Though I am not sure how this happened, it was nice to be able to listen to the parts that cut in.

Thank you for your show. It is a real treat when I get to hear it (which I guess means when my superiors are trying to contact me).

SGT Patrick J. DeGeorge
Camp Eggers, Afghanistan

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This sounds like a scene from a comedy, Sergeant. An American platoon is pinned down by enemy fire on a rocky hillside and the sergeant calls for help and he gets a guy talking about eating rhubarb pie at a church picnic. When we do the show — this week in LA, next week in Cincinnati — we try to imagine the listening audience, and I often think of a trucker crossing Nebraska and picking the show up from three different FM stations in the course of two hours, or I think of people sitting on a back porch in Columbus, Georgia, or an old man in a walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, but I haven't yet imagined troops in Afghanistan. I will now include you in my imagined pantheon of listeners.

Good luck to you and thank you for your service to our country.

Garrison:
I read that Flannery O'Connor gave a reading at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1960. Were you a student then, and if so, did you hear her? Also, where would you place her in the pantheon of American authors?

Mark J.
Macon GA

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I enrolled at the U of M in the fall of 1960 and so when Miss O'Connor (already a rising star in American letters) came to campus to read, I was a confused freshman, working 20 hours a week in the parking lots, taking Mrs. Forbes's Latin Reading class and Composition: The Essay with Richard Cody and American Government from Asher Christiansen and a freshman Humanities course with Joseph Kwiat, and I did not attend the reading. I'll bet that Richard Foster did, who taught the American Short Story course that I took later, which was where I first encountered Flannery O'Connor. She was, and is, an amazement. A great Christian humorist. Most of the stuff I've read about her tries to make her into a theologian, or a saint, but she was funny as can be, dark Irish funny. She is for sure in the pantheon. I don't know where. She is utterly herself, no doubt about that, and you can do a blind comparison of a hundred texts and you'll pick out Flannery O'Connor every time. I wish somebody would make a one-woman show out of her stories. It would be huge, if they could only get her voice right and squeeze her into a couple hours. Maybe I'll try that when I retire from radio.

Post to the Host:
As a regular, even faithful listener for more than a quarter-century, I sometimes find myself nostalgic for old, favorite snatches of sound. For example, while the opening theme of many years now is always a welcome sound, I do sometimes pine for the strains of "Hello, Love." But maybe the host has personal or sentimental reasons for not re-visiting that one. I wonder, though: How did "Lives of the Cowboys" ever lose Western Lubrication as a host? Thanks for everything you've done, and continue to do. Whatever else may be happening, you've been and remain a reliable bit of pleasure in every week of my life.

Kern C.
Seattle, WA

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We switched from Hank Snow's "Hello, Love" to the "Tishomingo Blues" way back in 1991 when the show started up again in New York, after a long sabbatical. An artistic move, from the sweet clip-clop of country to the sweet yearning of old blues. Tishomingo allows me to write new words now and then. And as a song, "Hello, Love" is no great shakes, though I can understand the nostalgic attachment. I feel it, too, but nostalgia is dangerous for a guy in his mid-sixties. Western Lubrication? I'd forgotten all about it. I'll get it right back into service. Thanks.

Mr. Keillor,
My wife and I saw your show on Saturday in NYC. I want to say it was one of the most enjoyable 2 hours and 15 minutes I have spent on this planet. Thank you for bringing such joy to us all.

Henry H.
Manchester, MD

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I take it you enjoyed seeing Elvis Costello yodel. Well, so did I. And Tom Rush and Heather Masse and the actors and the band and all. I don't know that I would rank that show ahead of two hours and fifteen minutes hiking down into the Grand Canyon, or sailing the Norwegian coast, or riding the Zephyr through the Rockies, but, as we say in Minnesota, it wasn't bad. It could have been worse.

Post to the Host:
I am an old mother. I just had a baby girl at 36. I want her to grow up and be a good Minnesota kid but I live in southern California, although my parents grew up there and I have visited there my entire life. What is the secret Minnesota holds to raising a good kid?

Jerri and Lindsey

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The risks of child-rearing are the same in Minnesota as in California, and any Minnesota parent will tell you so. I used to think winter made people more patient and kind but I don't think so anymore. I've met children raised in southern California who were beautiful children, outgoing, mannerly, warm-hearted, funny, thoughtful, and are growing up to become good people. What new parents don't understand, whether in Minnesota or California, is how time-consuming parenthood is. Kids need a lot of attention. Latchkey kids are at risk. Children of people who are happily absorbed in their own lives have a problem. It's hard to divide parenting equally between the two and usually one person carries a greater share of the load. But it takes an enormous commitment and I say that as a not very good parent. One advantage about Minnesota is that there's a large supply of uncles, aunts, and cousins. And we are a sort of cultural backwater, which maybe spares children the torture of trying to be cool. It's not really possible here so a kid may as well do the homework, shoot baskets, make the bed, wash the dishes, honor the parents, and save coolness for later.

Mr. Noir:
Is the daily newspaper on its way out of our lives? The Rocky Mountain News just closed (don't worry, you're column is being picked up by the Denver Post).

People keep telling me to not be upset, that it's just a matter of getting used to these same papers in cyberspace. You can't litter your office with cyberspace; you need stale newspapers to create the right atmosphere.

In 1968, the Editor of the Rocky showed up roaring drunk at our Statewide High School Press Day and still managed to write brilliantly — at that moment, I decided I wanted to be a newspaper man.

Best Regards,
Kenny of Steamboat

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The New York Times landed on my doorstep at about 7 this morning and in it, on the first page of the business section, was a good column by David Carr on this very subject, so you could go down to your bookstore or coffeeshop and buy a copy of the Times and see what he thinks. I read the paper while standing at the counter drinking coffee and then sitting next to my daughter eating her breakfast and now and then I'd pick up the paper, fold it in half and walk over to the window and look at it there.

Time for the Times to start charging for its online edition, I think. But as Mr. Carr points out, newspaper moguls are a timid lot, not given to change. We have two dailies left in the Twin Cities, one of which surely will fold. This actually might improve local journalism which — don't shoot me for saying this — seems to have improved in the past few years as staffs have shrunk. I look at the papers more often now and find more that I want to read. In the old flush days, the paper seemed to go more for high-minded term papers about positive things happening in our community, but what I want to read is a clear account of what the police say happened when that man allegedly assaulted the woman walking down the avenue four blocks from my house. It doesn't take a team of eight journalists to come up with that. I also want the paper to send reporters to the meetings of legislative committees and the city council. I don't read political blogs and broadsides and the withering crossfire of partisans. Not interesting. Government is interesting. The difficult choices facing President Obama these days, some of which seem to point away from the positions he took as a candidate: all interesting. But it takes dedicated talented journalists to make it so, and if you put out a newspaper that they write, people will buy it.

Mr. Keillor,
I just heard, for the first time, your skit on Earl Sanderson, Eagle Scout. You have made fun of many people and professions in the past. But I would encourage you to think twice about poking fun at a program that encourages honor and integrity in our youth. Eagle Scouts are some of our most upstanding citizens. Young scouts work for years to attain the rank of Eagle Scout. It takes a spirit of willingness to serve others, a desire to excel and years of dedication and hard work to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. I believe people who hold that rank deserve our respect. I don't think they should be made fun of in a comedy routine. I found your skit to be offensive. I would ask you to please consider removing it from your repertoire.

Julie L.
Helena, MT

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I'm glad to know that Eagle scouts have a staunch defender in Helena, Julie, and you're right about the Scout program. I myself was a big failure at Scouting, never even advancing to Second Class, but it was a terrific program back there in the ancient times and it has maintained itself against some powerful cultural tides and for that I have great admiration. Every week or so, people ask me to write a letter of congratulations to a young man who's attained Eaglehood and I sit down and do it, always careful to note that I myself am not an Eagle nor even a Raven or a Bluejay. More like a Magpie. Anyway — I'd only say that I don't think Earl Sanderson is the one being made fun of in that sketch. Okay, he's sort of a cardboard hero, lantern jaw and all, but I'd maintain that I, Carson Wyler, the man who keeps falling into holes and gets impatient with his rescuers, is the butt of the joke if anyone is. I keep getting Earl Sanderson, Eagle Scout mixed up with Crispy The Rescue Dog, but whatever — it's an occasional thing and the next time I attempt to do Earl, if there is a next time, I will remember your letter. Thanks for writing it.

Post to the Host:
I teach American Literature (among other things) at a suburban high school, and while I am flogging The Great Gatsby — to varied degrees of succes — I always offer the following extra credit opportunity: drive yourself to Rice Park, take a picture of yourself next to the F. Scott Fitsgerald statue, while holding your copy of the novel and sporting a cheesy grin, and turn it in to me for points.

The results are amazing! They turn out in droves, they boost the economy of St. Paul restaurants, and I end up with fabulous photos of kids with their arms around FSF (or kissing him in the case of some girls), holding up the book, and acting as if they are having a wonderful time.

By the way, they are sort of digging the book this round.

Vickie S.

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The statue of Fitzgerald by Michael Price has stood there in Rice Park in downtown St. Paul since the fall of 1996 when his centenary was celebrated in town and Robert Bly, Michael Dorris, Donald Hall, Patricia Hampl, Joseph Heller, Bill Holm, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jane Smiley, Tobias Wolff, and other writers gathered, along with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Fitzgerald's former secretary Frances Kroll Ring and his granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan, and the statue was unveiled. He stands, coat on his arm, on ground level so you can walk right up to him and say hello, and people do. Every spring, the park is thronged with Promgoers heading for the old federal courthouse now used for big public receptions and you can see young women in ball gowns going over to him which would have thrilled him of course, and sometimes there are wedding parties. The St. Paul Hotel is across the street, which is always bustling, and the library is a stone's throw away, so it's the right place for him to stand.