Post to the Host:
The English Majors must cringe when you make up lyrics containing phrases such
as "between you and I" for the sake of a rhyme with "die." Grammar should not be
sacrificed so easily.

Clarice K.
Seattle

You mean we ought to sing "It Doesn't Mean A Thing If It Doesn't Have That Swing"? "It Isn't Necessarily So"? The lyric of "Let Them Talk" wasn't written by me, however—it was written by Little Willie John, an R&B singer from Detroit who had a lot more to worry about than getting his pronouns straight. He was the guy who wrote "Fever" which Peggy Lee made into a huge hit and he was a crazy drunk who went to prison and died there at a young age, and when an old English major like me sings "Let Them Talk" it's sort of a thrill, frankly, when I come to the "between you and I"—I love it, love it, love it. I wouldn't write the song that way but I'm so glad that he did. It's a great song and there is no way around those lines: "Let them whisper for they know not/What lies between you and I./I'm going to go on loving you/Until the day I die." To change it to "between you and me...for all eternity"—makes it something less.

Post to the Host:
I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner and recently I have been thinking about shyness and it's sometimes disabling consequences for many people. I wonder if, as a shy person, you could say more about the power of shyness and how to encourage others who are literally frozen by this condition? I see shyness treated as a pathological condition with medication sometimes. Shyness is very difficult to understand if you are not.

Claudine G.
Portland, ME

I was a very ordinary sort of shy person—the gangly introverted adolescent from a strict fundamentalist background—an American classic—and what got me out of the downward spiral was a natural craving for attention that spurred me to write, and to go into radio (a perfect medium for a shy person), and then to read my writing in public, and then to do the show. A gentle ramp and there were all sorts of kind people along the way to keep me from slipping off, so when I look back, it doesn't seem particularly hard or heroic to me, though I do remember that feeling of being frozen. For some reason, interviewing people for my college newspaper filled me with terror, more so than standing up in front of an audience. Anyway, my shyness strikes me as circumstantial and nothing that anybody would prescribe medication for. And I'm in no position to give advice in these matters.

Post to the Host:
In the Summer of 2005, you were at Marymoor in Seattle for a show. I took my 12-year-old for the night of her life. You signed a book for her and let someone take a picture. You were enraptured by her soft short hair and stroked it while the photo was taken. She often reported to others that you "petted her". What you probably did not know was that it was her "Chemo hair". She was in the 7th month of leukemia treatment. She has since fully recovered and now has "Get that hair out of your eyes, why don't you" hair. She has always been a great fan of your show and I do believe that some of your good humor, wisdom and irreverence rubbed off. Thanks so much and we will see you this summer.

Sally
Seattle

I almost sort of remember that meeting—it was in a little courtyard in front of the old mansion that's part of Marymoor, and it had been a harrowing show because a stagehand fell off a ladder and fractured his skull and an ambulance came to take him away, which severely dented the evening. But the audience bounced back, amazingly. A horrible accident in their midst and then the EMTs were right there and people were shocked but we all sang a song about angels together and people's good spirits returned. (Last time in Seattle, at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery, an old man died during the show, a beloved old newspaper cartoonist. He had been ill but was feeling up to seeing the show and came and then he collapsed. It was dark and he slumped down on the grass and emergency people came and took him away without any of us being aware of it.) I am so glad that your daughter has bounced back and hope she is entering her teenhood full of spirit which means, of course, that she will dump our show in favor of something that is truer to her rhythms, which is just fine. If we can't amuse the young, at least we can give them something solid to kick. But if you come to the show in August, please come around afterward and say hello.

Post to the Host:
I recently saw a Honda commercial, supposedly done in many many takes, without the use of computers. It uses parts of a Honda car operating in a Rube Goldberg fashion - and you did the voice-over "wouldn't it be nice if everything worked like this" . The question is: to your knowledge, was this for real or was the whole thing done (as I believe) by computer graphics. Enjoy your show - sometimes enjoy the columns in the Chicago Tribune even if disagreeing sometimes.

Glenn M.

The word I got from Weiden & Kennedy, the ad agency in London, Glenn, is that the Honda commercial was done in real time in one take and that it only took a few takes to achieve perfection. If engineers were involved, as surely they were, I don't think they would've been satisfied with computer graphics. Engineers are deeply into reality.

Post to the Host:
My family and I had the a great time at the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, this past weekend. The show was great, but the thunderstorm provided a special show in itself. The invitation of the lawn audience into the cover of the canopy and everyone's efforts to accommodate the unique circumstances reassured me that PHC audiences are the kind of people I like to be with.

As a special treat after a majority of the crowd had left and the sun was setting on the longest day of the year we were amazed to see a double rainbow over the parking lot as we returned to our car. This was not a just a run of the mill rainbow, you could see both the beginning and end of the rainbow on the horizon. The parts near the tree line were practically florescent in intensity.

It was a great way to end a great day.

How did you arrange it?

Bob W.
Toledo,Ohio

I saw that rainbow, Bob, though not the florescent part — I was standing under the shell afterward talking to people. There were a couple of 14-year-old girls named Isabella and Julianna from Akron who gave me a CD they made singing some songs from the movie (with their faces morphed into a picture of Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin) and also an original skit entitled "Swimming Can Be Very Fun" and there was a lovely young woman walking with canes who had had surgery to remove a brain tumor and whose brain, aside from the part that runs her legs, seemed to be firing on all six cylinders. There was a man named Fritz and an Extremely Shy Woman and a woman who makes new blends of tea and there was a tall young man of 17 or so who is a long-distance runner and also a writer. There were small children and a couple of ancient people and a woman from Pennsylvania and dozens of others. Also memorable was the temporary loss of power in the hall, which hit about five minutes into the broadcast. Robin and Linda Williams and the Shoe Band and I were singing the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" and suddenly the stage went dark and the P.A. dead and the crowd went OHHHHH and we kept singing and soon, bit by bit, everything came back. We knew the storm was coming and during the warmup I took a wireless mic up the hill and sang some Elvis songs walking through the crowd as the rain started to come down and as the ushers opened up the fence and let the hill-sitters down into the covered seats. So it all turned out well. None of the people I saw afterward seemed bedraggled or crestfallen. The show loaded out in a couple hours and the next morning I was at the Cleveland airport and flew home to more rainshowers in Minnesota. Looked for a rainbow and didn't see one.

To the Host:
I was just wondering how you choose the musical guests for the show, and how someone might get an artist's information to the right hands for consideration.

Scott I.

People come in through all sorts of doors. The tenor Raul Melo I met at the Met at a performance of "La Boheme" — he was understudying the role of Rodolpho and we got to talking and I said, "Hey, come on the show tomorrow at Town Hall." And he did, and sang "Che gelida manina" from the opera and then came back a few weeks later and did "O Sole Mio" and brought the house to its feet. James Taylor came in through mutual acquaintances up at Tanglewood. Renee Fleming came in because she's a fan of the show and how could you turn down Renee Fleming? The Ditty Bops sent us a CD and it was very infectious and happy and completely original. Most people send in CDs or mp3 files and it all gets heard eventually and most of it is put aside pretty quickly as sounding over-produced or under-cooked or too much like too many other people. Some is too dark for our show. Some is too complicated for a live broadcast, too techno-, too studio-based. And then you hear someone who has something to say that really moves you and that's what you want.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I was recently enjoying a re-read of Lake Wobegon, Summer 1956, when I took note of your photo on the back flap in which you are hunched over a laptop in deep thought. Two questions, then: 1. Are you REALLY in deep thought or merely posing as such with the intent of looking "authorly" and 2. Do you compose your novels on a laptop? I ask because as a flailing failing novelist, these trivialities are important to me. My fellow failures will understand...

Thanks!
Jeff

They asked me to pose at the laptop and so I did and once I sat down I got engrossed in something I'd been working on. As for the novels, I wrote the first one on a Selectric typewriter and the second on an old CPT word-processing machine and then got a Toshiba laptop and I've been loyal to laptops ever since although a novel wants to get out of the computer and onto paper several times in the course of composition. The novel I'm working on now has been back and forth a couple of times: you print out a double-spaced typescript and revise it and type the revisions into the computer and a few months later you do it again. And then at the end, you get galleys from the printer and rewrite it there, and again if necessary. It's always good to see the work in a new format. It gives you fresh eyes.

Post to the Host:
I bought three types of tomato plants this year. Two of them on purpose, and one as a Plan B so that, if I couldn't find the tomato I really wanted, I'd at least have something close to it. My curious question is: What type of tomatoes do folks in Lake Wobegon plant? Do they start their tomatoes from seed or do they buy tomato plants? As an aside, every time I plant a tomato plant or pick a ripe tomato or see a bruised tomato on the ground, I think of "Tomato Butt." It's my favorite.

P.S. I think it would be wonderful if you did a show in Cincinnati. Where else do you have people who celebrate with a Flying Pig?

Erin H.
Russellville, OH

Erin, we did a show in Cincinnati a year or so ago and had a big time and we look forward to going back, just as soon as the scandal dies down. As for tomatoes, the serious disciplined tomato grower always used to begin with seed in a tray of little starter cartons on a windowsill or in a sunny corner — why pay someone else to do what you can do better yourself? — but, like everything else, this has changed. People are busy. Back in the day, if you told my father, "I was just too busy to start my tomato seeds this year so I bought plants at the store," he would think you had your priorities wrong, or that your life was crazy — possibly you were carrying on a life of crime on the side, or maybe you had come down with a nasty illness — but nowadays "I was too busy" is widely accepted as an excuse for almost anything. I believe that the Big Boys and the Beefeaters are still the dominant tomatoes in Lake Wobegon but I haven't been up there this spring. I've been too busy.