Post to the host:
My name is Joyce Sparrow. I'd like to know how you chose that name for the character in A Christmas Blizzard.

Thank you--

Joyce Sparrow
Kenneth City, Florida

--

Her husband's name is James, hers is Joyce, so you can see where that came from, and Sparrow is a perfect name for a wealthy couple. They roost in an enormous apartment high above the Loop in Chicago, and it's the week before Christmas. He wants to migrate to their nest on Hawaii and she is feeling ill and so they linger as Christmas mounts up around them. He dreads Christmas. She loves it. And she is the heroine of the story, so you should be pleased. Send along your address and I'll sign a copy of the book for you.

When I was in grade school, I was taught that a poem has to rhyme.

What I hear you read on Writer's Almanac, to me is NOT poetry. I say its an essay.

Why do you call them "poems" when they don't rhyme?

Thank you,
Judy

--

Poems may rhyme but it's not required all the time.
If they don't, it's called free verse, or vers libre.
It's like a zebra:
Whether he is in the zoo or running free,
He's a zebra. Same with poetry.
You can call them essays,
But essays don't put their heads down and graze. 

To the host:

I listen to your show almost every single week, but I cannot recall having EVER heard a barbershop quartet on your show. Since barbershop quartet singing is a uniquely American art form, and since you seem to enjoy harmonizing, I cannot imagine why you don't schedule them regularly.

What gives?

Robbie Brunger (a tenor)
Tallahassee, FL

--

Good question, Robbie. We've had a couple of quartets on, but haven't had one for a long time. Maybe I got tired of hearing "Hard-hearted Hannah the Vamp of Savanna, G-A" and "Where is the fair in farewell, where is the good in goodbye." Or maybe it's that the music has sort of calcified and is more about technique and showiness and scoring points than it is about true feeling — it's more of an athletic event than esthetic...

To the Host:
Just a small comment about yesterday's show, regarding the tribute to Harry Smith and his place among midwestern men — you said Jimmy Stewart is from Indiana. He isn't. Not the Indiana you allude to. Stewart hailed from the city of Indiana, Pennsylvania, a lovely little city that confuses matters even further by being home to Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Stewart's father had a hardware store in the heart of town, and for years, the Oscar for "The Philadelphia Story" sat in the window.

But putting Stewart and Harry Smith together is rather good company.

Blair T.
Topeka, KS

--

You are right, and thanks for correcting us. Indiana, PA is about fifty miles northeast of Pittsburgh and that puts Jimmy Stewart well out of the midwest, though he played midwesterners well enough to be considered one. It was the self-effacement, don't you know. We consider that someone who gets all flustered and tongue-tied if anybody compliments him is for sure one of us...

Mr. Keillor:
I am an aspiring writer and am currently working on a book, but I need some advice on how to proceed. I feel like my characters are moving too fast, things are happening too quickly. I have my plot and everything, but I feel as though I might end it a little too fast. What do you suggest?

Lucy G.
Chico CA

--

Hard to advise a writer in Chico at this distance, Lucy, though I remember Chico fondly from a visit a couple of years ago. A different California from the mythical parts — Hollywood and hippiedom — and I loved the little one-story white wood house where I stayed ...

A message from Garrison, reporting what he did upon arriving back to his St. Paul home last night, Friday September 11, after being released from the hospital.

--

I came home Friday evening, had dinner, wrote a limerick about my neurologist, and started writing about the experience of having a minor stroke. Nothing bad happens to writers — everything is just material.

Last Monday I suffered a stroke
Which affected the way that I spoke,
But it revved up my brain,
Which they cannot explain,
And now, when I think, I smell smoke.

Hi Mr. Keillor,
I work as a content editor for websites. That is similar to editing manuscripts but your eyesight goes south a bit faster. I love to write but I am so busy, that I cannot find the time.
What time of day do you find is the best to get your writing done?

Bracha B.
Omaha

--

I sure wish we could get rid of that word "content" to refer to writing, photography, drawing, and design online, Bracha. The very word breathes indifference — why would one bother about the quality of work when it's referred to as "content"? I'm sorry to respond to your good question with a cranky diatribe, but this word has crept from New Media over to Radio Broadcasting where I live in my little cave and now my Show has become Content and is sent around to stations in a nice digital package that squashes the sound. Public radio, which holds itself up as a believer in quality, is cutting corners on all sides and I see this perfidious word "content" as part of the downward slide. I loathe the word. It's like referring to Omaha as a development.

Okay, enough of that.

You're working hard at editing and if you want to do some writing, you probably have to do that before you go to your other job. Simple as that. You don't need to be fresh and lively to edit websites — your intuition and acquired skills will carry you through — but you have to come to writing with a big head of steam, and I suggest you do that for at least an hour, preferably two, before you go to your job. If you work 9 to 5, that means setting the alarm for 5 a.m. so you can shower and dress and have some coffee and take a nice brisk walk for 20 minutes and then settle yourself down in a quiet place and have two luxurious hours of stillness in which to put something on the computer. Then make a hard copy and stick it in your back pocket to mark up during any odd free moments during the day. If you're out of the habit of writing, you may need to do some exercises — give yourself some assignments — write about your parents, describe your best friends, write the story of your worst low point in life, etc. Just to get your brain working. In the evening, I'm afraid, your brain will be tired of words, so the morning is your best bet, and you'll have to give up some of your evening pleasures so you can get enough sleep. But it's worth trying this for a year or so to see what comes from it. And I wish you well.

Post to the Host:
Whatever happened to THE DALES shopping centers? I haven't heard about them on the show in years! Did they terminate their corporate relationship with the show, or did you decide that, in Today's World, they were no longer representative of the strong, Down-Home Values and morals necessary to keep our children Above Average? I'd certainly appreciate an update.

Mary S.
Richmond, VA

--

Bertha's Kitty Boutique was located in the Dales, and some other sponsors, and we dropped it because ---- well, because it was a local joke and the show went national a long time ago. Minneapolis, you see, has the honor of being the home of the First Large Indoor Mall ---- Southdale was considered the prototype, followed by Rosedale, Brookdale, Ridgedale, and so forth. To which we added Clydesdale, Chippendale, Airedale, and Mondale. Turning Fritz Mondale into a shopping mall was a lovely thing, but we killed off the joke before it got too old.

Post to the Host:
Dear Mr. Keillor, I'm 19 years old, a student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and grew up listening to your stories, starting with the one about Gladys hitting the raccoon.

I'd like to say that I've been living a good life so far. I've kept my grades up, I'm doing well in Air Force ROTC, I've become fluent in Japanese and spent 8 weeks in Japan, and I am now learning about Irish culture (especially music), and am planning a trip to Ireland.

It seems to me like I'm the odd one out in my generation. Other kids are getting in trouble and being stupid. Just last night, a kid got charged with a felony, because he was stupid enough to set off the fire extinguisher in the stairwell of my dorm, which subsequently set off the fire alarms, which we found out to be broken, because they wouldn't turn off! I was awake from 1:30 in the morning until 6:19AM when the alarm was finally cut off. I then had to wake up at 7 to make the 2 hour drive home. (Hey! This could turn out to be an interesting story!)

My question to you is this. What is your opinion of my generation? Do you feel optimism? Pessimism? Impending doom?

Taylor G.

--

You are off to a fast start, Taylor, and evidently you've discovered the pleasure of learning which might prove to be a hindrance and keep you from settling down in a career since you'll always be anxious to learn a new one, but never mind that. Learning is not something imposed by others, it's the mind fascinated and engaged on its own, and I wish you well. (Read some of those mournful and delightful Irish memoirs of the drunken father, the long-suffering mother, the terrible priests.) As for the kid who shot off the fire extinguisher, he isn't going to be actually charged with a felony----- they're just saying that to scare him ---- and he was simply drunk and that doesn't reflect on your generation whatsoever.

It's too early to tell about your generation, of course, but it may come to regret having followed my generation and having to fix what we messed up. Mine is idealistic, or thinks it is, or wanted to be, but we got handed the Vietnam war by the Greatest Generation which completely misjudged the situation and we haven't quite recovered from it yet. My generation was deeply engaged in politics, as a result of the civil rights struggle and Vietnam, and when I look at American politics today and the demagoguery and sheer trashiness, it's discouraging. Members of my generation fought long and hard to keep ROTC off college campuses, a wrong-headed campaign born out of anger against the war, and thereby deprived a lot of young men and women of valuable training, and also wasted time in needless controversy. So much righteousness and so little to show for it. The current debate over health care reform stands as the strangest and silliest in my memory. On the other hand, when I think that a 19-year-old in Knoxville is fluent in Japanese and turning toward Ireland, I feel hope for the future. I'm an optimist, of course. Being a parent of an 11-year-old, I'm more or less obliged to be. So stay out of trouble, keep your grades up, and enjoy your college years. And then report back.

Post to the Host:
Mr. Keillor, I am a 16 year old writer, and I love it, but I can never find ideas. Writer's block to the max! Unfortunately, it happens quite frequently. Do you have any advice for an aspiring young writer?

Jackie B.
Bristol, CT

--

The first obligation of a young writer is to describe your parents, a major project. I also think you should start a novel right away. I put mine off for years, thinking I wasn't ready, but it's invaluable experience ---- to set out to write a sustained work of prose fiction of a hundred-thousand words or so. The main character is you yourself, it's set in Bristol, and your parents are definitely in it. Your main character has to get in trouble and then get out. And maybe that's the problem here, Jackie. You've been too good, too obliging, helpful, kind, considerate, thoughtful, generous, responsible, etc etc. It's hard to be interesting writing about pure goodness. Find some vein of evil within yourself and work from that. You don't need to enact these things in real life, by the way. Unless, of course, you want to. The way to write a novel is to write a few hundred words a day, every day, no fail. So try it. Maybe it'll be a big failure, but big failures can build the foundation for great success. Good luck.

Post to the Host:

In early August my wife and I were visiting your lovely home city of St Paul. After strolling past the homes on Summit, we decide to take a break for ice cream in the homemade ice cream shop on Grand. I am sure I saw you there in person, my wife thinks not. It was about three in the afternoon on a Monday. Was that you?

David B.
Retired Professor of Psychology
Chico, CA

--

It was I, Professor Bauer, taking a break in the early afternoon, which is about when my brain goes dead and I need to reward myself for a morning's work with a big dose of sugar and butterfat. The Creamery is a St. Paul institution on summer afternoons and it's in my neighborhood and they have butter brickle. For soft ice cream, I go to Conny's Creamy Cone which is north on Dale. Also a good place to lean against your car and talk about baseball or the state of literature or the Republican party's leap into unreality on health care reform. These ice cream places employ high-school kids and so when you walk in, you also get a dose of youthful high spirits, and you can think about what you were doing the summer you were 17, and what if you were condemned to go back there, a harrowing thought.

Post to the Host:

I am an avid reader and now an avid convert to the Amazon Kindle platform.
Though I have some discomfort about what electronic readers are likely to do to the book/bookstore industry, it does rather seem the wave of the future.
(I notice you currently have 8 offerings for the Kindle.) What's your take on electronic readers in general?

Rev. Kevin P.

--

I'm all for readers reading whatever they want wherever they want to read it, and if some people would like to see text projected onto the sides of large buildings late at night, or written in the sky by planes, or transmitted to their cellphones, or attached to the sides of trees, that's fine by me. For now, I seem to be still enamored of the paper book with the covers and the spine, but I'm a restless man and who knows? I could pick up a Kindle next week and be converted in a moment. But then I'd have to tell the employees of my bookstore that they're the wave of the past. And whenever I go in the store, I see people wandering around and picking up books and examining them and browsing. Browsing is the thing you need to do in person, and I don't think Kindle is so good at that. Our bookstore represents the taste and judgment of its managers but there are other influences, best-seller lists, reviews, word of mouth, etc. And then the visitor gets to browse, which is a peripatetic search for serendipity, which is how readers come to find books they would never ever otherwise find.
That's the wonderful thing about reading, the venturesome part. The reader is restless, always looking for something new and exciting. This exciting new invention is fine for reading stuff you already know about, but nothing beats browsing.

Post to the Host:
Are you going to make another movie? I really enjoyed the Altman movie and miss that type of wonderful dialogue.

Thank you,
Jess

--

I'm working on a screenplay now, a fragile love story set in Lake Wobegon, and want to finish it before Labor Day. And then we shall see.

To the Host:
So, what exactly IS an English major supposed to do after college?

Andrea

--

This is the beautiful problem that confounds us all, Andrea, and we must face it every morning with as much wit and bravery as we can summon up. What you do, exactly, is get out of bed, pee, put water on to boil for tea or coffee, put bread in the toaster, choose between the apricot and blueberry yoghurt, eat slowly and thoughtfully, take a shower, and put on clean clothes, and by this time you likely will know what comes next. Merce Cunningham faced this problem and so does Michelle Obama and Brett Favre and the Queen of Tonga. If I believed in the efficacy of long-range planning, I'd recommend it, but I believe in luck and improvisation and the gyroscope in your heart and the built-in b.s. detector that English majors are supposed to acquire, having created so much of it in our term papers. You don't have ENGLISH MAJOR tattooed on your forehead so don't consider it a limitation. Just remember that your youth and energy and confidence and ambition are great assets in this world: you are needed somewhere. Remind yourself every day to do things that make you cheerful, which might include strenuous physical exercise or meditation or simply being with friends who make you laugh. Have a good life, in other words. They say that one good tactic in finding happiness is to help people who are worse off than yourself. I wouldn't know about that, but I know people who recommend it. And now I am going to go work on my novel, which is confounding me, and I wish you were here to tell me what to do with it. HEY. There's an idea. Be an editor. Why not? Start out by going over this letter and cutting out all the clichés and reducing it to the one sentence that actually makes sense. And then tell me what that is so I can go do it myself.

When did the rhyme go out of poetry? It used to be that poems rhymed and used a prescribed number of lines that were formed in a special way. Now it seems that all one needs to do is write down one's thoughts in a curious and clever way and call it a poem — and it is a poem. So when did this sea change occur and why?

Charles C.
Berkeley, CA

--

It began in Berkeley
Not steadily but jerkily,
The loss of rhyme
And sense of time
And a prescribed number of lines formed in a special way.
The poets of Berkeley looked out across the Bay
Toward the Golden Gate
And it rhymed with punctuate
But it didn't rhyme with mist.
So rhyme and form were kissed
Goodbye. Call it clever or curious,
But breaking the rules does not worry us
Poets. And something loose and free in the City of St. Francis
Made poets decide to take their chances
And let the sonnet ride off into the sunset.
Though I wrote a sonnet once at
The corner of 9th and Irving
As the N-Judah train came swerving
Around the bend, which proves that it can be done,
Provided you have someone
You can write a sonnet to who will be appropriately impressed.
Which is maybe why rhyme and form disappeared in the Far West.
The highest purpose of poetry is to win the heart of the Beloved
And there is no high purpose that is above it,
And if the Beloved doesn't care for rhyme and form, then really
A man is probably going to write freely.

To the Host:
I found PHC on public radio on a boring weekend 5 or 6 years ago. Since then I became a loyal listener on radio and even on the internet. I am originally from Somalia where I was raised in harsh nomadic life of tending to livestock.

After a long day, a good story teller has a miraculous way that soothes the effects of the day's hard work and gives motivation to go through the next day until the next story.

In Somalia , a good story teller is referred to as "Sheko Hariir" which translated to "The man/woman with silky stories." Silk feels nice against the body (for those who wear it, I never did), so is a good story against the soul. I experienced that many times growing up in Somalia (usually in the dark of night without seeing the face of the story teller).

I am glad PHC is there to deliver the same feeling in the U.S. It is a blessing that show is not on TV. It would ruin the experience.

Thank you,
Omar A.
A Loyal listener in Fairfax, VA

--

It is awfully kind of you to write, Omar. When I fly back to Minneapolis-St. Paul, I take a taxi home from the airport, and often the taxi is driven by a Somali and when I tell him where I live and how to get there, he looks into the rear-view mirror and says, "Are you on the radio?" I'm honored by these listeners and I think of them whenever I tell a story with strange elements in it — like ice-fishing, or Norwegian bachelor farmers, or Lent — and I wonder what the Somali cabdrivers will think of that. But now that I am a Sheko Hariir, I will not worry so much. Thanks for writing.

Post to the Host:
I just read your article about the state fair in this month's National Geographic and loved it. I was especially touched by the section about the fair as an agricultural expo and the young people who show animals. I grew up dairy farming (I still milk cows on the family farm) and I remember showing cows at the state fair as our version of summer camp, but with a bigger purpose. Those times nurtured a lifelong pride in being fortunate enough to call myself a farmer. I've always admired your prose (I was an English major in college) and it's a treat for you to pay tribute to our profession this way.

Thank you.

Bret C.
Dousman, WI

--

You are indeed an English major, Bret, and your letter is one of the few in the history of PTTH that I did not edit even so much as a comma. How could one not be moved by the sight of teenagers showing their animals at the state fair? I especially remember the llamas at the Iowa State Fair and the tenderness between this large gentle and somewhat ludicrous animal and the girls who had raised them, slender Iowa farm girls stroking the long llama neck and looking into its big brown eyes. The Iowa fair was a beautiful thing.

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I'm a young man searching for his purpose, having chosen higher education as his route (education and history major, thank you very much). While I've given my life to the study of the past, my soul belongs to fiction. I wanted to know; how did you find your voice? Where did you get the confidence to speak and write not just with, but in your own style? Like most young writers, I'm my own harshest critic: how can I weather the doldrums of my own insecurities and break into fiction?

Adam M

–

Don't work too hard at finding your voice. Find the voices of other people first — people around you, your family, the silent people taken for granted, the people who ride the bus to work, the misfits — see if you can get the interior voice of one of them down on paper, and keep trying until you think you've broken through. This is the doorway to fiction, and it starts with inspired journalism. Listening to people and trying to imagine them speaking openly and honestly in the recesses of their souls. As you are able to bring other people to the page, you'll find more and more confidence, and your style will emerge. Writers are people who write, not people who think about writing, and the less you dwell on your own insecurities, the better. Distract yourself by taking notes. Absorb your surroundings — they are stranger than they may seem, and you'll realize that when you put them down on paper.

Hi GK,

I'm curious as to what person(s)(living and not so much)you would like to sit around the campfire with drinking iced chamomile tea.

Also, thank you for the deep joy.

Take care,

Melissa M
Malibu

-

Living: Brave adventurous young women of the biking/backpacking ilk who have seen some of the world close up, on foot, and have stories to tell about it. They didn't just Google New York, or Jerusalem, or Finland, they went and walked around and met people willy-nilly and had small encounters that loom large in the retelling. I've had my chance to talk, and I have listened to all of the third-hand opinions I need to hear — tell me what you saw and did — I am all ears.

Not So Much: all of my dead uncles and aunts — I have a thousand questions for them that never got brought up at family reunions and Thanksgivings: why were we the way we were, so suspicious of Outsiders, so quick to judge, so formal with each other? why didn't grandma ever hug me? why did I never tell you how much I love you? And tell me about those moments of intense longing that led you to marry each other and produce us.

Post to the Host:
I notice you only occasionally mention Methodists on your show. I suppose it's possible that the Methodist Circuit Riders left Lake Wobegon to the Unitarian missionaries to the Ojibwa, but it's unlikely. In the small town in southern Wisconsin that I'm from, they needed Methodists to conduct funerals. The Catholic priest conducted funerals only for persons active in the parish and the Lutheran pastor had the same policy so it fell to the Methodist pastor to do all the funerals for the "lapsed," "fallen" and unaffiliated of the community who died. I'm guessing that there might be a very busy Methodist pastor in Mist County, MN

Jon A.
Florence, MS

--

You might guess so, Jon, and you would be wrong. Methodism never took root in this town. Neither did Episcopalianism, Seventh-Day Adventism, spiritualism, ventriloquism, or Chisholm. Small towns generate intense social pressure and minorities tend to get overshadowed and choked out. The big city is more fertile for individuality, as you no doubt are aware. Religion in Lake Wobegon is tribal, and you're either Catholic, Lutheran, or (in our case) Sanctified Brethren. The Brethren survived there as a tiny minority because they are Separatists by nature and feel that isolation and ostracism are only proof positive that they're on the right track. Methodists are more sociable, and whatever Methodists we might have had crossed over to the Lutheran church for the company. As for funerals for the unbelievers, Pastor Ingqvist takes that on  as a personal mission, and Father Wilmer is not so rigid about these things either.