I know Im supposed to just giggle and say how funny I think Garrison is but well...In his latest attack against the Catholic Church he makes it sound like the priest whips the censor around like Roger Daltry of The Who. Well as someone who actually goes to church I can assure you thatthis is not the case. Just the image for him in his mind of this gives insight to the hate he feels for the Church and I bet anything that in his mind that Represses the human condition. I look forword to more of his mentally ill ramblings in the future. NAtile Maines of the Dixie Chicks once said she was ashamed that President Bush is from texas where she is from. Being from Minnesota I'm...well you get the idea.

Thanks,

Brad Johnson

Foley,Mn

I posted a wry comment on this article, mimicking GK's tone, in which I "warned" the author against triangulation. If GK initiated a neighborly campaign against the use of incense, I "argued," Zen Buddhists would have to get involved on the other side since we (and I do mean "we" since I am a Zen Buddhist myself) use TONS of incense. Just to make sure there was no doubt about my satirical intent, I exaggerated further with preposterous images of street protests with taiko drummers, aging folk singers, and armies of Falun Gong practitioners doing qi gong.

Maybe it wasn't as funny as I hoped it would be. Maybe it did not merit a little red star. I do not understand why it would have been deleted. GK was kidding, and so was I.

...get a hold of its origins. It began with the Romans, for whom funerals were like cars are for us: status symbols. The bigger, fancier and more festive your funeral, the higher your status. Problem was, as your status was being feted you (the corpse) remained unburied and started to stink up the joint. The first incense was burned to cover up the smell.

I read your essay on catholicism with benign amusement. I don't care much one way or the other for religion, but I do recognize when someone or something is being gently tweaked, and like most everybody else who reads Salon, I'm worried about the direction our country is heading. So the first thing I thought after reading this was this: Well, we'll see now. If the first response letter I read is some skreetchy rant about how Garrison Keillor is a menace to society for making fun of catholics, then we'll know that we've totally lost our goddamn sense of humor. And it's true! We have.

I was raised Catholic. Though not a participant any longer, being mad as all get out over current events. However, as a point of information, incense is not a part of "regular" masses, even on Sunday. It gets touted out on the "holiday" services, high mass weddings or funerals and the like.

My older sister never liked the new non Latin services, and when she lived in New York City years ago she'd go to a famous Episcopalian Church because they still did a Latin service. On an Easter Sunday, I think, I was in town and joined her and almost had to be carried out from suffocation from the incense! You Episcopalians always trying to do us Catholics one better, perhaps the trade routes for incense don't quite reach Minnesota. But believe me when I tell you - your church does incense big time too! 8>)

Feel free to battle Benedict on any issue you care to - he nor anyone else in the Catholic Church (including far too many of its parishioners) are facing the endemic problem they most certainly have.

Everyone's entitled to their suspicions, Samantha T., but in an essay he wrote for the Nation, Keillor doesn't sound like much of an atheist: "Once, on the Merritt Parkway heading for New York, I came upon The American Atheist Hour, the sheer tedium of which was wildly entertaining--there's nobody so humorless as a devout atheist." (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050523/keillor)

And DeLaSalle doesn't sound too upset with Keillor:

Humorist and soon-to-be movie star Garrison Keillor withdrew Tuesday from the fracas over a planned football field for DeLaSalle High School on historic Nicollet Island. ... Upon hearing the news, DeLaSalle alumnus and former Hennepin County Commissioner John Derus said, "Bless him. ... He's a formidable character. He's an icon." Keillor, whose "A Prairie Home Companion" movie premieres tonight at St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater, had been bombarded with e-mails from DeLaSalle supporters. Derus said supporters of the 750-seat football field won't picket the movie, as they had threatened to do. "We won't send kids if he's out of it. Absolutely not," Derus said. (http://www.startribune.com/462/story/406723.html)

Poor Garrison. This is like a typical dust-up in Lake Woebegone, only it doesn't have the decency to be fiction. This nation is dangerously close to losing its sense of humor. Somebody please save us from those on the extreme right and left who can't smell a joke if it pulls them by the nose hairs. Jeesh.

Abigail Farrell

I always found Keillor to be a precious pain-in-the-ass - this piece seals the deal. Those wacky Catholics with their hocus pocus! GK - the DeLaSalle students aren't upset with you because you're an atheist. They're upset with you because your combination of cloying folksiness and NIMBY mentality is grating.

We are Catholics in St. Paul -- we attend the big church on Summit in your neck of the woods -- and every feast day my 7-yr-old dramatically gags and splutters like she is being force fed pimentoes. We're taught that the "smells, bells, and yells" of Catholic liturgy help us appreciate that Christianity is a religion of incarnation, and not merely positive thinking, but my little girl would surely disagree. I'm sure she would go leafletting for you when the movement catches fire. (pun intended)

We are Catholics in St. Paul -- we attend the big church on Summit in your neck of the woods -- and every feast day my 7-yr-old dramatically gags and splutters like she is being force fed pimentoes. We're taught that the "smells, bells, and yells" of Catholic liturgy help us appreciate that Christianity is a religion of incarnation, and not merely positive thinking, but my little girl would surely disagree. I'm sure she would go leafletting for you when the movement catches fire. (pun intended)