//Json index for use with feed widgets. Define a unique object name for each blog using the variable jsonObjName. ptthFeed = { "channel": { "title": "Post to the Host", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/?refid=0", "description": "Host Garrison Keillor answers your questions about life, love, writing, authors, and of course, A Prairie Home Companion. ", "published": "Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:13:22 -0600", "language": "en", "items": [{ "title": "Intro to Storytelling", "description": "\I’ve been listening to your show ever since I was a teenager, and I love it so much. I am a fourth grade teacher now, and I would like to help my students become storytellers. What advice do you have for them or for me?\<\/p\>\n\n\Angela M.\nPortland, ME\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\Have a unit on jokes: put 40 or 50 narrative jokes in a hat and pass it around and everyone has to tell that joke, impromptu. Introduce them to the classic stories — you, \Angela\<\/strong\>, telling them the stories — The Little Mermaid (the original H.C. Andersen version), Ulysses, Noah and the Ark, the Prodigal Son, Romeo and Juliet, B’rer Rabbit, Snow White, and so forth — and introduce them to the idea of oral impromptu narrative….\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/11/12/intro_to_storytelling.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:13:22 -0600" },{ "title": "Birds of a feather", "description": "\\Post to the host:\<\/strong\>\nMy name is Joyce Sparrow. I’d like to know how you chose that name for the character in \\A Christmas Blizzard\<\/em\>\<\/a\>.\<\/p\>\n\n\Thank you—\<\/p\>\n\n\Joyce Sparrow\nKenneth City, Florida\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\Her husband’s name is James, hers is Joyce, so you can see \where that came from\<\/a\>, 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. \<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/11/03/sparrow.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:00:00 -0600" },{ "title": "Poetry 101", "description": "\When I was in grade school, I was taught that a poem has to rhyme. \<\/p\>\n\n\What I hear you read on \Writer’s Almanac\<\/a\>, to me is NOT poetry. I say its an essay. \<\/p\>\n\n\Why do you call them “poems” when they don’t rhyme? \<\/p\>\n\n\Thank you,\nJudy\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\Poems may rhyme but it’s not required all the time. \nIf they don’t, it’s called free verse, or vers libre. \nIt’s like a zebra:\nWhether he is in the zoo or running free, \nHe’s a zebra. Same with poetry. \nYou can call them essays,\nBut essays don’t put their heads down and graze. \<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/11/02/poetry_101.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:48:17 -0600" },{ "title": "Shave and a Haircut... ", "description": "\To the host:\<\/p\>\n\n\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.\<\/p\>\n\n\What gives?\<\/p\>\n\n\Robbie Brunger (a tenor)\nTallahassee, FL\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\Good question, \Robbie\<\/strong\>. 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…\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/10/29/shave_and_a_haircut.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:25:44 -0600" },{ "title": "One of Us", "description": "\\To the Host:\<\/strong\>\nJust 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.\<\/p\>\n\n\But putting Stewart and Harry Smith together is rather good company.\<\/p\>\n\n\Blair T.\nTopeka, KS\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\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…\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/10/26/to_the_host_just_a.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:40:48 -0600" },{ "title": "Slow Down and Look Around", "description": "\\Mr. Keillor:\<\/strong\>\nI 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?\<\/p\>\n\n\Lucy G.\nChico CA\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\Hard to advise a writer in Chico at this distance, \Lucy\<\/strong\>, 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 …\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/09/15/slow_down_and_look_around.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:54:42 -0600" },{ "title": "Home Again", "description": "\\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.\<\/em\>\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\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. \<\/p\>\n\n\Last Monday I suffered a stroke\
\nWhich affected the way that I spoke,\
\nBut it revved up my brain,\
\nWhich they cannot explain,\
\nAnd now, when I think, I smell smoke.\n\<\/blockquote\>\n\n\\

\<\/blockquote\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/09/12/home_again.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:29:01 -0600" },{ "title": "Content and its Discontents", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\Hi Mr. Keillor,\<\/strong\>\nI work as a content editor for websites. That is similar to editing manus\cripts but your eyesight goes south a bit faster. I love to write but I am so busy, that I cannot find the time.\n What time of day do you find is the best to get your writing done?\<\/p\>\n\n\Bracha B.\nOmaha\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\I sure wish we could get rid of that word “content” to refer to writing, photography, drawing, and design online, \Bracha\<\/strong\>. 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. \<\/p\>\n\n\Okay, enough of that. \<\/p\>\n\n\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. \<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/09/08/content_and_its_discontents.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:02:54 -0600" },{ "title": "The Dales", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\Post to the Host:\<\/strong\>\nWhatever 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.\<\/p\>\n\n\Mary S.\nRichmond, VA\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\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.\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/08/27/the_dales.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:58:35 -0600" },{ "title": "GENERATION NEXT", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\Post to the Host:\<\/strong\>\nDear 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. \<\/p\>\n\n\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.\<\/p\>\n\n\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!)\<\/p\>\n\n\My question to you is this. What is your opinion of my generation? Do you feel optimism? Pessimism? Impending doom?\<\/p\>\n\n\Taylor G.\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\You are off to a fast start, \Taylor\<\/b\>, 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. \<\/p\>\n\n\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.\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/08/25/generation_next.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:04:51 -0600" },{ "title": "THE FOUNDATION FOR GREAT SUCCESS", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\Post to the Host:\<\/strong\>\nMr. 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?\<\/p\>\n\n\Jackie B.\nBristol, CT\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\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\<\/b\>. 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.\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/08/24/the_foundation_for_great_succe.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:22:24 -0600" },{ "title": "WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\Post to the Host:\<\/strong\>\<\/p\>\n\n\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?\<\/p\>\n\n\David B.\nRetired Professor of Psychology\nChico, CA\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\It was I, \Professor Bauer\<\/b\>, 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\<\/a\> 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\<\/a\> 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.\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/08/24/we_all_scream_for_ice_cream.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:07:18 -0600" },{ "title": "NOTHING BEATS BROWSING", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\Post to the Host:\<\/strong\>\<\/p\>\n\n\I am an avid reader and now an avid convert to the Amazon Kindle platform.\nThough 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.\n(I notice you currently have \8 offerings for the Kindle.\<\/a\>) What’s your take on electronic readers in general?\<\/p\>\n\n\Rev. Kevin P.\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\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.\nThat’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.\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/08/24/nothing_beats_browsing.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:52:44 -0600" },{ "title": "Lake Wobegon Screenplay", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\Post to the Host:\<\/strong\>\nAre you going to make another movie? I really enjoyed the \Altman movie\<\/a\> and miss that type of wonderful dialogue. \<\/p\>\n\n\Thank you,\nJess\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\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.\<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/08/03/lake_wobegon_screenplay.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:25:06 -0600" }, { "title": "English Majors", "description": "\\ $\"\"$ \<\/p\>\n\n\\To the Host:\<\/strong\>\nSo, what exactly IS an English major supposed to do after college?\<\/p\>\n\n\Andrea\<\/p\>\n\n\—\<\/p\>\n\n\This is the beautiful problem that confounds us all, \Andrea\<\/strong\>, 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. \<\/p\>\n", "link": "http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/07/28/english_majors.php?refid=0", "pubDate": "Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:43:17 -0600" }] } }