Thank you sir for coming to Saginaw. By the time I heard about your talk, I couldn't get tickets.

My wife and I love your radio shows and your rapier wit.

Saginaw is an interesting place. We suffer from Dow pollution and the worst of the right wing politics trying to ram it down our throats, literally.

I wish we could have been able to get tickets.

You are a treasure, even if you don't think so. I was so glad that you returned to your show.

Oh, it's snowed most of today and it's cold. You probably would have seen more of our airport today...

Oh, they have lower 'ridership' and yet want to build a new $54 Million dollar terminal. Go figure...

Sighing birds are a beautiful thing -- as are women with a lovely bone structure. My wife and I are of the more substantial bone structure that might not be called "lovely," but rather, workable and tough. Yes, the lady too.

I'd humbly like to extend an official invitation for you to come to Longmont, Colorado. Wait for May, when the flowers in the Rockies are in bloom and the snowiest months are behind us. We're 45 minutes from a trailhead, and after we walk and sniff I know a great place for hot chocolate and a fire. Something stronger might be appropriate too, closer to town.

Ah, places.

mr Keillor

your weekly columns in salon are a treat and . . . thanks so much for the introduction to Theodore Roethke, for those of us who have not been in the know.

In Shaginaw, in Shaginaw

I went to Shunday Shule;

The only thing I ever learned

Was called the Golden Rhule,—

But that’s enough for any man

What’s not a proper fool.

- love Roethke. And I'm from the torrid South. Imagine :)

I'm attracted to places with character, so when I tell people I'm returning home from San Diego to Saginaw, they look at me like a fool, especially to do so in February. It's more interesting there than most people could imagine.

Desperation puts into relief hope. And hard luck hope is an amazing thing.

I wish I could have been there for your appearance too.

Dear Garrison;

On your show you talk about the Shenandoah Valley from time to time, how about actually coming out here? I even have a venue. James Madison University. I even have a crowd waiting to listen. Call us. You won't have to stay in the flea bag motels, and no one will tell you "you were not our first choice". Wanna see some other "heartland"? No poets, but lots of real, beating hearts. Please come.

I attended your performance. You warmed my heart, made it worth braving the -10` weather!

Peace!

Dee

Another Saginaw resident checking in. Saginaw has the feel of town balanced on a knife's edge, ready to tip into complete devastation on one side, or a slow, modest prosperity on the other. I suppose our story isn't much different from a couple dozen other small rustbelt cities, but when it's your (adopted) home, if feels different.

And though I doubt he'll read it here, I too would like to thank Garrison Keillor for coming here. It's the same for bands, speakers, exhibits, shows, or anything else; it's a rare victory when we're able to snag one traveling between Detroit and Chicago and haul it far enough North to put on a show in Saginaw. And we need all the help we can get.

Thank you for remembering Roethke. Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one. What saint ever struggled so much, rose on such lopped limbs to new life? And on and on.

One understands low self-esteem. It is a very handy tool for restraining one's innate bumptiousness. Fairly sure as such an accomplished individual you have learned to live with it, so will not utter useless encouragements.

But Greenspan would have been much inferior, of course. Full of CYA and bad prose.

You describe the over-confident beautifully, striding through airports, bellowing into cell phones, attending "inspirational" meetings on making money (a bit oxymoronic, it seems to me), afflicted with less self-doubt than a caribou.

Good work. Thanks.

I hope they invited Greenspan to come so they could grill him for his role in screwing up the economy and the housing fallout in particular.

Poetry is what gets alot of us through here in Michigan-the Writers Almanac emailed to me each morning is my daily bread.

Thanks Garrison.

I don't wish to assume, like so many correspondents here, that Garrison Keillor has either enough time or enough inclination to read each one of these letters. I picture him stuck waiting on a delayed aeroplane or alone after a long, lazy afternoon with his family. This time that he finds, I imagine, will be used to write his column, prepare his show, refine his speech and do any one of the myriad of things that a man of his ilk must do.

But (and my English teachers always told me never to start a sentence, much less a paragraph with a conjunction), if he is reading this I want to convey my thanks to him.

I live around about 3000 miles away from GK. In a little country known to the world as Scotland. We have several famous exports (maybe some of them are amongst the readers to Salon). I am 26 years old. And I write for a living.

The terrible suffering that comes from the great beauty of GK's writing (and his radio show) is that I will never be able to compete. This beauty that has spanned an ocean and two, maybe three, generations to reach me is unattainable. It has something magical about it. Something old world. It's like listening to an old record of a good band, or spending time with playful children. There's a wise and low voice inside all of us fighting to get out and play with words in that relaxing style. He may lack self-esteem but that serves to make him all the more readable.

I don't know, I may be right or wrong, but maybe this is the way that GK feels about the first line in that famous poem from Saginaw, Michigan.

RM