Dear Mr. K.,
I have been a fan of your show for quite some time. I had the opportunity to view the documentary made about you at the RI Film Festival a few weeks ago. Apparently it was the East coast premiere... what a great movie! The theatre was filled with other fans...I haven't seen so many dorky white folks in one place in a long time! (me included....) I have not been able to attend a live show --- it's tough to leave the beautiful "Ocean State" in the summer, but even tougher to head for St. Paul in winter! I'm going to work on it, though...

Laura B.
West Kingston, R.I.

Glad you liked the Peter Rosen documentary. I haven't seen it. But I imagine it's good because THE MAN CERTAINLY TOOK A LOT OF FILM IN SHOOTING IT. He was in my house, in my car, backstage at the theater, and like all photographers or videographers, he wanted more, more, more. A truckload of videotape. Me tying my shoes. Me putting yoghurt on my bran flakes. Me blowing my nose. I think he learned about video documentary from Andy Warhol. And of course after he had invested weeks and weeks and weeks in shooting the thing, I couldn't very well tell him to stop, so on and on it went. (I believe he started filming in the summer of 1969.) Endless. And each time I got divorced and started a new family, HE HAD TO GO BACK AND SHOOT EVERYTHING AGAIN. It drove me almost out of my mind and my mental health was precarious to start with. The lawsuit, I am confident, will be settled out of court. I struck Peter, but very lightly, just a slap in the face and a kick in the shins, and why he is asking three-point-six million for mental anguish, I don't know, but if we go to trial, I will have plenty to say about mental anguish. The man took years out of my life.

Post to the Host:
I loved your Rhubarb Tour show at the Iowa State Fair show. You started the show, and I assume the others, with a song pleading to God for nothing else than to please exist. What was this title? Know of any places I might be able to find it? I'd love to have it as my Facebook "religious views".

Thanks,
Paul

The song is a sonnet entitled "Prayer" that is the first in a collection of about 70 sonnets that I am publishing this fall. More about that soon.

Dear Mr. Keillor:
What do you think of the way people clap along with the Powdermilk Biscuits song and "Be-bop-a-ree-bop Rhubarb Pie?" I thought it was a European or Germanic tradition to clap ON the beat, and an American one to clap OFF the beat. But everyone you perform to each week seems to prefer the ON beat, whether they're Minnesotans or New Yorkers. That's an interesting phenomenon.

Corinne S.
Athol, MA

It's an interesting phenomenon for us on stage, my dear, especially if the clapping falls behind the beat and we're trying to stay with it, sort of like running in soft sand. I do remember audiences clapping on the off-beat — in New York, San Francisco, and I think in L.A. — and found it thrilling, but there is a powerful cultural undertow that pulls us into military march time. I would guess that if you dig into cultural anthropology, you'll learn that clapping on the off-beat is not American so much as African-American, and though African-Americans have had an enormous influence on American music, they haven't necessarily changed our rhythmic impulses, which may lie very deep indeed. So you could have a white audience thrilled by rhythm and blues who nonetheless might be culturally tied to the polka and John Philip Sousa. Decades ago in Minnesota we began to see mostly-black high school bands marching in parades and people were wowed by them, the style of them, and the shuffle-time cadence of the drums. It takes time for white folks to pick up that feel. I don't think an audience is going to jump right into it with both feet. I reckon that I could get them to do it by clapping on the off-beat over my head but I don't like to bully the audience. And my arms would get tired.