Dear Garrison,
I grew up in a small town in northern Illinois, but don't quite
feel the nostalgia and warmth for it as I do for towns in Wisconsin
(and Minnesota). I haven't heard you speak much of Illinois. Do
you find that there's not much to speak about? Or do you have some
favorite places there?
Danielle
Danielle, When we Minnesotans venture to Illinois,
we tend to be drawn to the bright lights of Chicago. That’s where the
train goes and that’s where we go, unless, of course, we have relatives
in small towns. My wife loves Chicago and so I go there, to the Art
Institute and the Lyric Opera and to windowshop on Michigan Avenue and
go to lunch with Studs Terkel at old joints where men like Guy Noir
smoke cigars and toss back martinis and we listen to him talk about
the great and the infamous and the grand old days of radio. When you’re
with Studs, you travel in elite company and get introduced to a whole
crowd of people you thought existed only in books.
Dear Mr. Keillor:
At the age of 42, I've recently started writing a weekly column for
a local newspaper. I'm the husband of a Presbyterian minister, church
has always been a part of my life, and I find it sort of difficult not
to include some references to my faith [in the column]. I live in a
diverse community, and although I'm very comfortable with my faith,
sometimes I have to imagine my audience and back off a bit. Do you have
any advice?
Charles Summers
Charles, Nobody need hide their light
under a bushel and when we talk to each other, we should face each other
as whole human beings and the ones we really are and not cardboard cut-outs.
One does need to do this with some humor. By humor, I don’t mean jokes,
I mean a spirit of humility and self-effacement. In this p.c. age, Christians
have backed off quite a bit and accepted a dry secularism that is thinner
and poorer for lacking the language of faith; there is joy and passion
and sweetness of spirit in the faith, without which life starts to feel
like a long committee meeting. But one does need to guard against pride,
always a hindrance for any writer.
Gary-
I miss Buster the Show Dog and Scotty's Cough Syrup for Dogs. I won't
pester you to bring them back, but do you ever reach back to the archives
to reprise old characters and routines?
Steven Koster
Steven, Soon as I’m done writing Post to the
Host, I’ll sit down and meditate on Buster and Timmy the sad rich teenage
boy and Sheila the Christian jungle girl and Fr. Finian and see if lightning
strikes.
Dear Garrison,
I miss "The Lives of the English Majors". Is there any news regarding
them? Did they ever find employment?
Sincerely,
Catherine Kasper
Catherine, employment is always temporary for
us English majors. We were shaped by reading poetry in which the hero/heroine
was always wandering away from comfort and routine and launching his/her
little canoe on uncharted waters. I’ve been doing this show since you
were a waif and yet I feel sure that I could walk away from it anytime
and stick out my thumb and hitchhike to California.
Dear Mr. Keillor:
Whatever happened to Larry??? He was one of the funnier characters on
the show. Are you planning to bring him back--at least for a cameo?
I hope so. I'll bet I'm not the only one who thinks of him when venturing
into the dark part of the basement.
John Foote
John, Larry got rich off his website, larrydotcom-dot-com
and he went off to the Caribbean with his cats. I think of him whenever
I venture down the stairs under the Fitzgerald Theater stage and descend
into the vast dark caverns and maybe one of these days he’ll show up.
Dear Garrison and Company:
After a fourteen year career with the USPS as a rural letter carrier,
and six years shy of a marginally lucrative retirement package, I am
considering a full time arts position. The position I am currently seeking
offers little in the realm of tangible benefits, and a salary roughly
1/4 of what I currently earn. Theatre is my passion, and it has been
challenging for me to balance my full time civil service with evening
commitments to this or that role, or project. The USPS is what it is,
and I could complain about their legendary ego-maniacal managment style,
but I knew that from the get-go. Would it be insane for me to trade
quasi-government-job-security for something that might be more joyful
and authentic? Please advise.
Sheri Cox
Sheri, When you are deciding whether to jump
off the roof and test your new wax-paper wings, I don’t think those
of us standing around on the lawn should offer you any advice. It would
interfere with your focus, and anybody who ventures into the arts needs
to be terribly focused. Theatre may be your passion, but a life in theatre
demands much more than passion: professionalism of a very high order,
for one thing, which means keen judgement and emotional equilibrium
and the ability to learn quickly. When you leave the USPS for the theatre,
it’s like leaving the Imperial Roman army and hooking up with some tiny
embattled Scottish tribe in a cave. Hope you like haggis.
Dear Mr. Keillor,
"Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" was one of my favorite movies from last
year. I noticed that you have featured the performing artists from the
movie on Prairie Home Companion several times. When viewing the movie,
I saw someone in a crowd scene that looked very much like you. Since
the Coen brothers are from Minnesota, is it possible that you know them
and that they asked you to do an unacknowledged walk-on in the movie?
Martha Schipul
Martha, that guy in the crowd wasn’t me and
I don’t know the Coens and they don’t know me. Minnesotans are prickly
about each other and terribly intolerant of each other’s success. Every
time I read a lukewarm review of a Coen brothers’ flick, I feel a little
tremble of pleasure. If they were Californians, I’d be happy for them.
But they’re from here, and I am deeply irritated that they went away
and became a big success. Also, I’m a writer and they’re film dorks.
Dear Mr. Keillor,
Hello. I am a college student at a Minnesota university and feel I am
quite an oddity and loner when it comes to the mainstream American campus.
I run into too many people who are neither bright, nor sensitive, nor
particularly capable. These encounters have zapped my strength. Am I
a freak, or do I just need to give it time, accept being a bit lonely
in life, and pray that eventually I will find a kindred spirit or two?
Do you have any advice for a twenty-something who cannot seem to fit
in anywhere?
Caroline
Caroline, College is a good place for independent
spirits such as yourself. It tolerates social eccentricity so long as
the eccentric shows promise and diligence. You can walk around arguing
with lampposts so long as you do elegant math, you can be cantankerous
and dress weirdly so long as your ideas are interesting. Everyone experiences
their share of loneliness in life. The dull and insensitive and incapable
may be as lonely as anyone else. It would a big help to you if you learned
to enjoy the company of your inferiors, even if only occasionally. Everyone
has at least one good story in them, so it’s worth your while to hang
around and try to cajole it out of them.
Dear Garrison,
Have you ever considered doing a USO tour? I spent 20 years in the Navy
and I always thought it would have been a treat to hear you perform
and bring us the news from back home.
Mark Miller
Mark, If I were a real performer, I’d do it,
but I’m a writer who happens to work in a sort of sheltered workshop
and the thought of standing up in front of a crowd of young men in uniform
gives me the willies. They’d rather have Jennifer Lopez and I’d rather
she were there and not me.
Mr. Keillor -
I have always enjoyed your stories about Tom Keith’s exciting, cosmopolitan
life. Any chance he will get his life story published? An audio recording,
perhaps?
Teresa Lewis
Teresa, The problem with publishing Tom Keith’s
life story is how to expurgate it for Midwestern consumption. If his
Minnesota neighbors were to read about all those Malibu beach houses
and the swimming pools full of blonde starlets and the red Lamborghinis
and the 300 hp snowmobiles and the jet helicopters and the fondness
for high explosives --- I mean, just the fuel usage alone would disgust
the public radio reader. His has been a life of heedless hedonism and
he feels it best not to rile up the puritanical element.
Dear Mr. Keillor:
I'm a liberal northeastern establishment Jewish professional type who
has wound up in the mysterious circumstance of being in a commuter marriage
which is partly back east and partly in northern Minnesota. Have any
Jews lived in Lake Wobegon, and, if so, how did they cope with small-town
Minnesota life? How did the other Wobegonians get along with them?
MJ Eickstadt
M.J., Hope you’re
thriving in your bifurcated life, and of course it’s an ideal life if
one can manage the transitions. All of us have a certain restlessness
in us and to move back and forth between the North Woods and the Eastern
Establishment must be a pleasure for you, coming and going. Yes, there
have been, and still are, Jews in Lake Wobegon. The organist at the
Lutheran church, for example. She thrives in Lake Wobegon because she
definitely is needed, always an asset in a small town. There used to
be Jewish dairy farmers and some Jewish merchants, mostly dry goods,
and they’re gone because their children chose to leave. My feeling is
that taciturnity is a greater problem for Jews than for Norwegians,
that the chosen people require more hubbub than bachelor farmers do
and aren't so content to converse with tall pine trees, but that’s only
my innocent opinion.
Dear Mr. Keillor and Prairie Home Companion Participants;
Please add me to the list of loyal listeners who would love to hear
more chapters of "The Story of Bob, A Young Artist."
Mike O'Neil
Mike, that makes four of you. Eight more and
we’ll have a quorum.
