A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

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!

September 2003

Dear Garrison,
I'm 28 and have been working with computers since college, but I want to get out. I don't have a passion for the field anymore, and the economy isn't helping. It seems like corporate America is so full of greed and mismanagement nowadays. Sometimes I think of just moving out West and becoming a writer, or even a forest ranger, and get away from the rat race (and New Jersey) and start anew. Your stories depict the kind of simple life that I yearn for. Any advice?

Weary in Piscataway

Dear Weary,
A 28-year-old single guy should not accept weariness as a way of life. Quit the job that's grinding you down and tie up loose ends and put your stuff in storage and get in your car and head west. Don't make plans about becoming a writer or a forest ranger. Just give yourself a big experience of freedom and exploring this great nation. You can do this when you're 28. Wend your way slowly, stopping to visit anybody you know on the way, and if you don't rush, if you meander and stop whenever something catches your eye, by the time you reach the Pacific you'll know more than you do now—about yourself, about what you should do, about a lot of things. And then maybe I'll write you and ask for advice. I'm 61 and have been working in radio since college and I don't know if I have enough passion for it anymore. When you get to California, send me a note about what I should do. —GK

Dear Garrison,
I'm a member of a Unitarian church located in a soybean field a few miles north of Bowling Green, Ohio. Even though we're lay-led, some of the members would like to hire a minister.

If this radio thing doesn't work out, would you be interested?

Steve Israel
Maumee Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Bowling Green, Ohio

Steve,
I am honored to be considered, even if you're joking, but I wouldn't fit in. Beneath this cool tolerant exterior beats the heart of an old reactionary and pulpit-pounder and if you ever put me in front of Unitarians with a microphone, I'd be hollering about man's inherent sinfulness and unworthiness and singing "Are You Washed In the Blood". I'd be roaming the aisles, poking people, baying like a dog. It wouldn't be a pretty sight. The radio thing isn't working out, as a matter of fact, and probably in a few weeks I'll be unemployed, but I would be a piss-pour minister. Trust me on this.

Dear Sir,
I am a student living here in Germany, listening to A Prairie Home Companion, but for weeks now you are rebroadcasting past shows with no sign on the horizon of an upcoming new show. Forgive me for being so rude as to ask what has happened? When do we hear new things?

Said Yama Ahamdi

My esteemed Said,
This very Saturday will come a brand new show, with the Derailers, a terrific rockabilly band from Texas, and the excellent Jearlyn Steele and all the rest of our troupe. We will not test your knowledge of German, we will not talk about Iraq, we will not assign term paper topics, just the usual fizzy warm-hearted entertainment and goofiness, though Jearlyn and I will do a duet of that glorious Albert Brumley gospel song, "I Will Meet You In The Morning." I reckon the show starts around midnight in Germany. We'll be thinking of you.

More to come...

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