GK responds to queries on topics from childbearing to potato salad, with a little bookstore fetish in between. 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! Send your own post to the host.

Mr. Evans, For me, it would be too interesting a comparison. I'd listen to five minutes of it and switch off the radio. To me, the show is the future, it isn't the past, and I'm not interested in what it sounded like twenty years ago. I only care about what we do next week. People who like the old shows are welcome to exchange the tapes anyway they like. For me, my idea of hell is listening to myself on tape. Next Saturday I'll get in the car at about 2:30 p.m. and drive to the Fitzgerald and park beside the loading dock and be onstage and ready for the 3 p.m. rehearsal, and then go on the air at 5 p.m. I have every expectation that it'll be a great show. I am good at expectations after all these years. Somehow, you'd think that an old guy like me would weary of the chase, but I honestly think that this week's show is going to be fantastic. As for our January 1981 shows, I couldn't care less.

Dear Garrison,
I recently ordered from your catalog and have greatly enjoyed listening to "The First Five Years" and the "PHC Tenth Anniversary Album". I love your white suit with the looooong stovepipe trousers, the white hat, and the warm fuzzy beard--and the autoharp, so mellow and gentle. Do you ever think about growing the beard again, perhaps with gray in it now, or taking up the autoharp again in this new millenium?
Kathy Morgan

Dear Kathy, You're an archeologist, not a listener, and I'm grateful for your interest, but frankly I don't want to be a mummy. Whoever that guy is in the white suit, God bless him, but I'm here in 2001 and mainly what I think about is (1) How am I going to teach my composition course at the University next semester? And (2) when is my darling daughter going to start talking? That's it. The rest is simple. I don't care about beards or autoharps.

Garrison:
Do folks in Lake Wobegon have any annual traditions for celebrating the New Year?
Becky Lloyd

Dear Becky Lloyd, Some people in Lake Wobegon have New Year's Eve parties and most of us celebrate it on Eastern time, not Central, for the convenience. On New Year's Day, most people have a ham buffet and watch football games. I am a Lake Wobegonian who escaped football, and I just fool around with my wife and daughter and cook and go for a long walk and watch the "Milo and Otis" video. My daughter loves this video. The one about the cat and the dog. I sink down on the pillows beside her and we watch the stupid video. It's better than football. And I can sleep through it.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Back in the early eighties when I first starting listening to PHC, it seemed like you were always singing Tell Me Why. I now can't get that song out of my head and for some strange reason, I would love to hear it again. Any chance that you will be doing it ever again??
Steve Simonin

Sir, I will make a note of this and try to sing "Tell Me Why" with the audience again. Soon.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
Recent, a friend mentioned to me that [during your last two NY shows] you had a few hundred new YORKERS singing a RELIGIOUS hymn!" Neither of us would conclude that PHC is any sense sectarian or an exercise in proselytizing audiences. Still, maybe an artist can be evangelical without being confessional. Moving people beyond a merely secular holiday celebration, even just a little, is a wonderful achievement, touched with a kind of grace.
John Hollwitz

Dear Mr. Hollwitz, The hymn, I believe, was "Silent Night," sung by the audience at the conclusion of our Dec. 23rd show. We sing this every year at Christmas and I always burst into tears and am unable to sing. Same this year. I got all clutched up and stood there with tears in my eyes and the audience sang. Then I flew home on Sunday (Christmas Eve) and my wife and daughter and I went to Advent service that evening, and the congregation sang "Silent Night" and I wept again. There you are. Thank you, Franz Gruber, for putting older Midwestern males in touch with their feelings.

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Do you happen to have any words of wisdom for those of us who are extremely busy trying to write college entrance essays? I'm trying to write in an interesting and sincere way, but all my essays are beginning to sound rather forced. I'm at my wit's end. Help!
I love your show,
Lucy

Dear Lucy, I attended a state university, a land grant university,and I didn't have to write an essay to get in, though once I was admitted, I had to write dozens of them. The college application essay strikes me as inherently dishonest, but when you're faced with such a demand, utter absolute honesty is your best policy, it seems to me. You're too young to lie. Just blurt out what you think and want and hope, and let them sort it out.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
I've just been reading some of the other emails you've received about the shows you did during and just after the election recount fiasco. Some Republicans wrote to say they were angry, or disappointed, or disgusted. I just wanted to let you know that I was so deeply touched and grateful for what you said in those shows that I wept listening to them. For the first time in the whole post-election-day process, I felt connected, through your show, to a broader community of people who more or less agreed with me.
Katie Kenney

Dear Katie, I don't agree with you. I'm a writer. I'm in the business of disagreeing with people. Your gratitude makes me uncomfortable. Let's have a beer and I'll find a way of disagreeing with you and making you mad at me. And I'll also find a way to get you to pay for the beer.

Dear Garrison Keillor:
I am writing to suggest that your "anger" about the election results that you describe in the Post to the Host - December Letters be channelled to media other than public radio and its web sites. While you offer Rush Limbaugh's ubiquity on commercial radio as justification for your grumblings, your reasoning lays bare your political ideology and throws fuel on the fiery arguments of those who wish to silence public radio. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's 1999 Annual Report states plainly: "The primary source of funding to the Corporation is the federal government." Viewed in this light, your venting is an irresponsible. Your show will surely be "Exhibit A" for the Republican-controlled branches of our government, including the courts, as they pursue an agenda to eliminate all funding of public broadcasting, not just for your "puny radio show in Minnesota."
Joseph Ferrar

Dear Mr. Ferrar, I'm sure you're right and so let's look forward to the battle, whatever it may be. I'm afraid, though, that the show ---- and public radio ---- are too unimportant for anybody to bother about. Too bad for us.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
Greetings from Nepal where my wife and I volunteer our services as a medical doctor and anthropologist respectively. We enjoy listing to your program via the internet. It is always nice to get away for a bit from the harsh realities of the world for just a bit each Sunday afternoon. But we have to add our voices to the complaints regarding the recent partisan humor you have been expressing in your tomes. According to your posted response to another listener regarding the same topic, you feel that your recent comments only bring a balance to the republican opinion that crowd the airways. I don't remember the program being used as a political forum like this in the past? Perhaps I am mistaken? I certainly don't mind a little humor based on politics, but I do feel that people of the stature of the Vice President and the Governor of Texas are due more respect than they have been getting from you whether it be in the form of satire or not.
Dr. Dave and Dr. Kimberly Beine
Kathmandu, Nepal

Dear Drs. Beine, You've been gone too long. Americans don't bow to politicians anymore. We haven't since I was a child and Ike was president. But if you want to see real abuse of polticians, check out the English. My gosh. British political satire is rougher than rugby. Tune in to the Germans, the Swedes, the Danes, the Italians. Americans are very gentle to politicians compared to almost any other democratic society I can think of. You've been away. You somehow are confusing candidates with the Dalai Lama. Disabuse yourself of the notion.

Garrison:
Add me to the legion of longtime fans, a devoted listener to every show, buyer of books, chachkes and knicknacks, owner of a collection of scores of tapes, who was absolutely disgusted by the obnoxious political rant and your graceless refusal to consider that the complainers have a point. Yes we know (now) that you're bitter about the election loss. We're bitter too, over many things your gang has done to our country. Now let's all set it aside, tolerate a few gentle ribs from each other, put on our cloaks of civility and tolerance and go back to you doing good work and us appreciating it. An apology would help, but we'll let it go if you're not in the mood.
Terry McGarry

Dear Terry, I don't know who my gang is and I'm sorry you're bitter about it. I'm not bitter in the least. George W. stole the election fair and square through the U.S. Supreme Court and managed to prevent the counting of votes and he is now president-elect. An ugly, smirky, shallow, illiterate, and violent man. His record vis-à-vis executions of indigent and poorly-represented Texas defendants is truly worth your attention. But somehow his becoming president doesn't trouble me all that much, despite my friends in Denmark and the U.K. who are still in denial. I did very well in the stock market during the Clinton era, and I'll simply ease out of stocks and into municipals, and ride out the Bush recession, and enjoy the spectacle of a president who can't read and isn't interested in policy and doesn't know much about the world outside of Texas. God bless him. And you too.

Have enjoyed your show for a bunch of years and almost worn out your CD "Hopeful Gospel quartet". We are not going to stop listening to your program because of the comments on the election, as some of your fans have threatened to do. We forgive you. After all, our old cat misses the litter box on occasion, we still love him!
Ray & Lorraine

Dear Ray & Lorraine, Maybe you should stop listening to the show for a week or two, just to punish me. And maybe your old cat didn't miss the litterbox. Maybe what you found on the floor was something of your own. Let's have a look at your underwear.