Post to the Host:
I notice how frequently guests on news shows and other interviews reply with a "thank you" when they are thanked by the host/interviewer for their thoughts/report. I would have thought that it made the most sense to reply with a "you're welcome". What's your take?

Mark P.

Maybe so, but often the guest is flogging a book and the interview is free promotion and so some gratitude is in order. What irks me far more are the reporters whose names are given twice, at beginning and end, of their report, even if it's 30 seconds long. ".....here with a report is Xavier Onassis in Atholl. Blah blah blah blah blah. This is Xavier Onassis reporting from Atholl." And then the anchor says, "Thank you, Xavier." Why do you thank someone who has simply done his job? Even the meteorologist gets thanked for reading the Weather Service forecast. It makes more sense to me to thank the cleaning ladies. They do important work and do it better than a lot of reporters do theirs.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
New Yorker writer and best-selling author David Sedaris seems so trendy, even exotic, with his boyfriend, his house in Normandy, his sardonic attitude, his chain-smoking mother, and his famous siblings.

You, on the other hand, seem very Midwestern.

Is there any chance that you'll be taking up a same-sex partner, living the life of an ex-pat, or at least doing some undercover reporting at a nudist camp? Maybe you could take on work at a Macy's Santaland? Or at least spend a lot of time with Ira Glass.

Your demographics could use some more youthfulness.

Ken B.
Austin, TX

A generous thought on your part, Ken, but we are who we are and past a certain age, we can't very well remake ourselves. Mr. Sedaris is, down deep, a very hard-working painstaking writer who does extensive touring and is extremely conscientious about public performance. He is inexhaustible and famous for his generosity to his fans. The house in Normandy is neither here nor there. He seems to be a deeply monogamous man with old-fashioned attitudes about privacy and loyalty and discipline. Sardonic, in his case, conceals a sentimental romantic. If young people are drawn to Mr. Sedaris, I can only applaud their good taste. If I seem very midwestern, it's probably because I've lived here most of my life. One could do worse.

Post to the Host:
My family is from a small English village and my parents came to this small Canadian town so although there are obvious differences, like fewer Norwegians, Lake Wobegon seems familiar. I recently had someone laughing uproariously as she described the British television show "The Vicar of Dibley". She wound up by saying "of course it's all so far-fetched". I laughed. It looks silly on TV and then you go to a village in England and you realise they are really quite restrained in making this, and other village life shows like "Last of the Summer Wine" and "Dad's Army". Do people accuse you of telling tall tales about Lake Wobegon? And are you leaving out the really crazy things that happen?

Winnie M.
Invermere, Canada

A storyteller always cuts a narrow swathe, I believe, and stories diminish as they become larger in scope. I leave out a great deal—some craziness of the obsessive variety and also most of the sadness which seems to me to be commonplace and in the end rather dull. This may be a personal failing on my part. I am interested in valiant people who rise up and go cheerfully off to face shame and failure, which is what I do every day and so does every parent. Not so interested in the lonely anguished person you find in so much poetry gazing out at the cruel world, which is just self-pity projected onto a large screen. I'd rather tell about ballplayers or travelers or elderly people fighting to hold on. The new novel, "Liberty," is about ambition and how it separates you from people even if you are ambitious in their behalf. Clint Bunsen, the Chairman of the 4th of July committee, who even as he strives to put on a phenomenal Fourth feels that his whole life is a big fat mistake. He gets over it and the cloud disperses, as clouds tend to do, but I like writing about his ambition which, to some people, seems crazy. A writer should be able to treat insanity as something normal, which it surely is, especially in a small town. A good place for eccentrics, since over time the norms are relaxed and people with even rather dramatic eccentricities—Tourette's people, for example —are taken for granted. But gloom and mopiness are so shallow and trivial and have a numbing effect on a story. They're a standard staple of poetry and poison in prose fiction, and that's why I prefer prose fiction.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I was fortunate enough to see you last night at The Indiana State Fair and would like to thank you for the excellent performance. One of the main reasons I became such a fan of you and your radio show is the wonderful unfamiliar and terribly hard to find songs you or your guests often perform. Is there a collection of these numbers available? If there is not please consider making one, or in the very least if you would be kind enough to suggest some of your favorite songs that the average twenty year old punk rocker such as myself may not be familliar with it would be greatly appreciated!

Nick A.
Fort Wayne

Thanks for coming, Nick. It was a wonderful night. The big crowd on folding chairs on the dirt racetrack, the crowd in the grandstand, people singing "On The Banks of the Wabash"—you knew that one, didn't you, kid? The candlelight gleaming through the sycamores? Didn't they force you to sing that in grade school? (Not many sycamores in punk rock, and not many smells of new-mown hay.) The great song Pat Donohue sang, "Too Late," is one you could learn—Pat wrote it—and you'd find that on our archive. "Sleepless Nights" is an old Everlys song, widely available online, ditto "Too Far Gone" (Billy Sherrill) and also the songs Suzy Bogguss sang. Some of the songs were my originals—nothing for you there—but the song I'd love for you to learn is "Lonesome Robin" which was the one about the death of the outlaw Robin Hood. Bob Coltman wrote that and I heard it sung many times by the late great Helen Schneyer, and when she died, I thought I ought to learn it and sing it. You can find that online too—there's a very sweet video of some English actor singing it on YouTube, in fact. So there's no need that I can see for me to publish a book (Wonderful Unfamiliar Hard To Find Songs) since everything is online. On the other hand, books are more permanent than digital. When the planet falters and the lights go out, our descendants (while cursing us for our foolishness) will gather in their smoky caves and pore through books. You just wait and see.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Hi! I'm a senior in high school and I'm planning on following a career in the performing arts. It's always been a dream of mine to be a part of the show. What I would like to know is how could I possibly join Prairie Home Companion someday, if possible? If not, do you have any tips or hints on becoming a truly dynamic performer? Thanks so much.

Rebecca S.

Push yourself in the direction of your fears, Rebecca, and learn to master things that frighten you —shy persons should learn to get up and speak and sing, clumsy people should do gymnastics, juggling, riding a unicycle. (I didn't do it and I regret that—I'd be a better performer if, in addition to writing, I'd studied dance and picked up a musical instrument and learned how to stand on my head.) You are in your prime learning years and they're not to be wasted sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher blather about things you're not motivated to really learn. The listless passive student sitting in a classroom in order to placate his or her parents—a huge waste of time. Grab hold of your ambition and go with it. Get a job as a tour guide, a good place for a performer to start. You master a body of knowledge and you learn to present it face-to-face to a small group of people and you will know immediately if you're engaging them or not and if you aren't, you'll learn how to improve. I live in an old neighborhood of stately piles, many of which have interesting stories, and ever so often a gaggle of tourists goes by, led by a guide—this is a great performance opportunity that might be better for you than a bit role in a show. Or camp counseling—children are a tough audience. And start building your skills—develop your singing with old show songs, learn to tell jokes, take up juggling, master the tango and the samba, take to the flying trapeze, learn to play the tuba, and keep a daily journal of all your doings. Whatever you do, don't sit and wait for the phone to ring. And when you're ready to take over the radio show, let me know. I've got a few more years and then I'm out of here.

Post to the Host:
As a big railroad fan, I wish you'd add a train engineer character in one of your wonderful stories.

Thanks and cheers from Switzerland!

Terence R.

I've never ridden in the cab of a locomotive, Terence, so I lack the background for that story. I'd love to do that, of course, but in America these days we are so paranoid that nobody is allowed to do anything interesting whatsoever. I doubt that the railroads would allow a four-star general to ride in a locomotive. My dad worked on the railroad in the mail car, but I never got to ride on that either. I have sung songs about train engineers who died in terrible collisions and that is about it. I did tell a story years ago about a train called the Prairie Queen which had an engineer and it jumped the tracks and landed in the Mississippi but he escaped somehow. How about I do a story about an airline pilot instead?

Post to the Host:
On the "Roadside America" Web site is a story of Wendall Hansen and his "Bible Birds" that performed at churches for over 50 years. He passed in 2002 but the bird act is still going on. I was wondering if they had been any part of the inspiration for your bird stories? Love your show, started listening in 1979. Thanks.

Sidney E., Jr.
Louisville

I have the greatest respect for the Bible Bird show in Noblesville, Indiana, but I would point out that their act includes sword-swallowing, a flag-raising, and birds rescuing another bird from a burning building, none of which seems to me to have any relevance to the Bible, whereas the Gospel Bird show of Ernie and Irma Lundeen was entirely Scripture-based and included the Flight of the Dove from Noah's Ark on which thirty birds were dressed up as various animals. And there was a Rapture scene as well, and the birds took up the collection, flying around the room and picking up currency from the upraised hands of the congregation. So you can see that the Gospel Birds set a very high standard indeed. I am sure that a cockatoo who can swallow a sword is quite a thing to see, but you could offer that at a floor show in a Las Vegas casino. The Lundeens' show is definitely superior, at least for Sunday night church programs. My honest opinion.

Post to the Host:
The schedule for the Rhubarb tour in August seems quite daunting, seventeen shows in three weeks. I'm sure the people who get to see the show will be thrilled, but, why are you working so hard this summer? Who's minding your tomato plants?

Ann

No tomato plants here, just flowers in pots and some birch trees struggling in the drought. And I am a forgetful gardener at best. My parents were terrific gardeners and I was just a little slug in their shadows. We tend to avoid our parents' competence. So I went into this other line of work which includes jumping around on stage, which they never dreamed of doing—would never have done—and because the show is not like any other show, there is an obligation to run it out there and let it be seen. A show doesn't exist unless it goes out onstage. And the touring show is a sort of distillation of parts of the broadcast—hot music, duet singing, poetry, dolphin singing, sound effects, stories, a big two-and-a-half hour carnival. Touring itself is not onerous if you travel with professionals, which I do. Sam Hudson and Albert Webster, with Tom Scheuzger and Ken Evans, handle all of the hard work, and Deb Beck is the tour manager who does the details, and then there's just me and the cast, all of whom are grown-ups who want to be doing this. Pat Donohue and Rich Dworsky are the best musicians I ever got to work with, and every night they come in for sound check and bring an intensity and focus to the show that is the heart and soul of the matter. And Fred Newman is a trouper and a showman from the word go. And now this summer we have Suzy Bogguss who is a real singer's singer. And Andy Stein and his Venuti fiddle and his Gus Cannon saxophone. And Joe Savage our steel guy. And Peter Johnson and Gary Raynor the rhythm section. So you see, it's not hard work really. It's a big last hurrah and then I come back home and work on the novel. That's hard work.