June Week 1, 2006

Another trip to Colville, Grandpa's ears this time, and a stop to see Sabine at Bonnies...

Grandpa's checkup at the Clinic was not wonderful, Probable Renal Failure, Enlarged heart (Probably requiring a pacemaker) and prostate, suspicious patches of skin... lots of tests pending.

They are very concerned about Christian and are sending him to a Gastroenterologist in Colville on Friday...

Damn, how much more can go wrong... lots I guess, Shit rolls down hill gathering more shit as it travels along...

I did get the Humming Bird feeders hung and I got the Honeysuckles planted... the Rosefood I had Monica put on the roses seems to have triggered some growth... wheew.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Monica promised me that she would go to church with Mom if I bought her a particular CD... I did... and she didn't go... She has become a real hard person to like... I don't know what to do about it. I was raised to believe that if someone treats you good you should treat them good, If someone gives you respect then you give them respect... if someone disrespects you then you don't have anything more to do with them, which would be fine in this case except for the fact she is my daughter and she lives here.

... then there's Calie... if anything she is even worse... she not only doesn't show me or anyone any respect she goes out of her way to be confrontational.

... and, now that I am talking out of school Christian is no better, for the last 24 hours he has been pretty good but Rick at the Selkirk Clinic scared the B-jesus out of him... Usually he just does whatever he wants to do and won't get off his ass unless you threaten to take away the computer.

Well I am through bitching for a while... got to go out back and shred some branches and clean up the yard.

Sabine is in town and will spend the night with us... she is looking to find a job up here and buy a house. I hope she can swing it... she is a very nice lady... I spent a minute or two modifying this picture to look like a watercolor, came out nice.

Haditha, My God, they killed babies! Girl Babies... age 14, 10, 5, 3 & 1, The oldest begged, in English, for their lives... none of the 24 men women and children had a weapon... Hoo Rah my ass... Marines, where is the honor in this? And No, the fact that a Marine driver was killed does not justify this... they were supposed to be professionals, Marines... The Marines I know were sickened by Mi Lai, they said, "That's Regular Army, what did you expect."... now they have their own Mi Lai to live down.

Here's a belief for ya... I believe that this is far from an aberration. I have seen videos of soldiers shooting civilians, shooting wounded and laughing about it, and shooting into crowds, they don't appear on TV anywhere, only the Internet. Just like with Mi Lai, this would not have come out if it wasn't for the media, it was the Times this time.

Those kids are trained to shoot first... period. I really am not surprised that it happened, I am surprised that it was reported and that people are taking it seriously. Army Marine or Air Force it doesn't matter, there are people in those outfits that have no business in uniform. It was the same as in Vietnam Free-fire Zones, no human being can come out of that sort of situation unchanged.

There is no way those kids should still be in Iraq, they aren't trained to be Social Workers or Policemen or anything else they are 'point and shoot weapons' or as they call themselves, they are Warriors. ... I hate this crap... why are we still there, it is criminal that they are still there, they did their job three years ago, get them the hell out of Iraq... and Afghanistan too!

Bush, No... forget Bush, He couldn't direct traffic on a one-way street... The Administration has to end this, but they won't, We have to end this. Our government is in over it's head and still digging deeper. They keep moving the target, WMD, Al Qaida, crush the Army, Capture Sadaam, hold elections, elect a government... on and on... it will not end until the Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, ad-nauseam... team of demented misfits is relieved of power... damn! It will not end till we vote the bastards out of office.

No excuses this time

Molly Ivins: AUSTIN, Texas (Creators Syndicate) -- So, Haditha becomes another of the names at which we wince, along with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and My Lai. Tell you what: Let's not use the "stress of combat" excuse this time. According to neighbors, the girls in the family of Younis Khafif -- the one who kept pleading in English: "I am a friend. I am good" -- were 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1. What are they going to say? "Under stress of combat, we thought the baby was 2"?

"We have a Haditha every day," said Muhanned Jasim, an Iraqi merchant. "Were (those killed in Haditha) the first Iraqis to be killed for no reason?" asked Ghasan Jayih, a pharmacist. Well no, but we Americans don't count collateral damage unless we're forced to. We prefer to ignore collateral damage, especially if they're under 5.

Someone else with a greater taste for the ironies of technology will have to explain why it's funny that this "Haditha" was uncovered in part by a solider taking photos with his cell phone. Good work by Time magazine and Col. Gregory Watt. Apologies are owed by any on the right to Rep. John Murtha, who warned of Haditha early, though none of us is holding a breath. The attacks on Murtha's patriotism were despicable. When will that tactic wear out?

Meanwhile, back at the full-force fun festival known as Washington, here's a moment to cherish.

Two weeks ago, Amir Taheri had an op-ed article in the Canadian National Post claiming the Iranians have a law requiring Jews to wear yellow badges. It turned out to be a complete fabrication and has been the subject of much contempt among bloggers. So Tuesday, Taheri was invited to the White House along with other "experts" to give the president their "honest opinions." With advice like that, our war in Iran will be a slam dunk.

Speaking of slam dunks, Bud Trillin of the Nation is on a tear about Bush's picks for the Medal of Freedom. First, he gave it to old "Slam Dunk" George Tenet himself, after pushing him out as head of the CIA. Then, Paul Bremer got the medal. Remember him? Guy who screwed up Iraq beyond recall in the first year.

We're lurching into the ludicrous. So we're thinking, who else belongs on this distinguished roster? "Heckuva job Brownie" Brown, of course. The guy in charge of implementing the Social Security drug plan. Rumsfeld! By golly, there's a man who never made a mistake.

I think that lets out Tony Blair, who joined Bush in a mistake-admitting-athon last week. (The Prez is sorry he talked "too tough" to the terrorists.) Neither of them thought to name "the war in Iraq," for example, as a mistake. But, as The Economist rather unkindly put it, their meeting was "The Axis of Feeble."

Ever hopeful that some good might yet be pulled from the rubble, the appointment of Henry Paulson as treasury secretary raises hope among the never-say-die crowd. He's good on global warming -- how's that for a change? But the real irony is that the administration had to bring in someone who can "soothe Wall Street," which is said to be "nervous." This whole administration has been run to favor, and grant tax breaks to, "Wall Street." How dare the ungrateful louses be "nervous"?

``Made in America -- by immigrants'' and ``We too have a dream'' read signs at the May 1 marches across the country. By invoking an American ideal, today's newcomers are staking their claim as the latest generation of nation-builders. But their critics object to this appeal to history; they resent comparisons to previous generations of immigrants, who were legal.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., for example, says his grandparents -- Dutch immigrants who settled in Nebraska -- didn't try to get ahead by breaking the law. Rather, they made it through ``frugality . . . hard work, grit, honesty,'' he says. ``They would be very upset about people who didn't do it the right way.'' Such comparisons between past and present miss a crucial point. There were so few restrictions on immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries that there was no such thing as ``illegal immigration.'' The government excluded a mere 1 percent of the 25 million immigrants who landed at New York's Ellis Island before World War I, mostly for health reasons. (Chinese were the exception, excluded on grounds of ``racial unassimilability.'')

What's more, statutes of limitations of one to five years meant even those here unlawfully did not live forever with the specter of deportation.

In the early 1900s, immigrants from Europe provided cheap, unskilled labor that made possible the nation's industrial and urban expansion.
They shoveled pig iron, dug sewers and subway tunnels and sewed shirtwaists. Even then, people born in the United States complained that newcomers stole jobs, were ignorant and criminal, and showed no desire to become citizens. The rhetoric often was unabashedly prejudiced against Italians, Jews, Poles and other ``degraded races of Europe.'' In the conservative climate after World War I, Congress slammed shut the golden door. For the first time, the United States imposed numerical limits on immigration. Congress gave the smallest quotas to Eastern and Southern European countries and excluded all Asians; it also created the U.S. Border Patrol and eliminated statutes of limitations on deportation. It exempted countries of the Western Hemisphere, however, in deference to agricultural labor needs and the State Department's tradition of pan-Americanism.

These quotas created illegal immigration as a mass phenomenon. And since that time, Americans have been of two minds about the problem.
We want restrictions on immigration, but we hesitate to execute mass deportations. Congress has pursued border control, on the one hand and legalization of the undocumented on the other.

Our legalization policies recognized that once a person settled here and had a family, a job and a home, he or she became a part of society.
Separating families was seen as detrimental to individuals and society, and deportation was likened to banishment.

Here's how hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants -- mostly Europeans -- became legal:

President Bush wants Congress to provide today's undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship, to establish a guest-worker program and to add the National Guard to police efforts at the border. History is only partly on his side.

Providing a route to legalization -- even one that is much less generous than we've offered in the past -- at least adheres to precedent. But history shows that as long as we restrict the number of legal entries, there will be a parallel stream of unauthorized ones, even with tough enforcement laws. And the European experience with guest-worker programs should warn us that guests don't always go home when they are supposed to.

To really tackle the problem, we might consider updating other policies from the nation's past. Reinstituting a statute of limitations on deportation would limit the numbers of undocumented people in the country. We also could raise the ceiling on legal admissions -- or eliminate it, especially for neighboring countries. This is not such a radical idea: The North American Free Trade Agreement already has lowered barriers to the movement of capital and products, while citizens of European Union states have free movement within the EU.

Legalizing the undocumented is just and humane. But unless we address the restrictions on legal admission that do so much to cause illegal entries, the cycle of enforcement and legalization will continue.

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MAE N. NGAI is a history professor at the University of Chicago and author of ``Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.'' She wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.

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There are, of course, many angles from which to view the escalating immigration debate. Mexican immigrants, who constitute the largest share of the undocumented, have a unique history with the African population inside the United States. As the Black community weighs in on this very contentious issue, it becomes necessary for us (both Black and brown) to review the history that we share.

In 1826, the Committee of Foreign Relations of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies refused to compromise on the issue of fugitive slaves and defended the right of enslaved Africans to liberate themselves. Mexican government officials cited “the inalienable right which the Author of nature has conceded to him (meaning enslaved persons).” Congress member Erasmo Seguin from Texas commented that the Congress was “resolved to decree the perpetual extinction in the Republic of commerce and traffic in slaves, and that their introduction into our territory should not be permitted under any pretext.”

Again, in October 1828, the Mexican Senate rejected 14 articles of a newly proposed treaty and harshly criticized Article 33, stating, “It would be most extraordinary that in a treaty between two free republics slavery should be encouraged by obliging ours to deliver up fugitive slaves to their merciless and barbarous masters of North America.”

Reporting on the growing number of Anglo settlers in Texas, Mexican general [Manuel de Mier y] Terán reported that “most of them have slaves, and these slaves are beginning to learn the favorable intent of Mexican law to their unfortunate condition and are becoming restless under their yokes. …” Gen. Terán went on to describe the cruelty meted out by masters to restless slaves: “They extract their teeth, set on the dogs to tear them in pieces, the most lenient being he who but flogs his slaves until they are flayed.”

On September 15, 1829, Afro-Mexican President Vicente Guerrero signed a decree banning slavery in the Mexican Republic. Yielding to appeals from panicked settlers and Mexican collaborators who saw Mexico benefiting economically from the Anglo presence, Guerrero exempted Texas from the prohibition on the introduction of slaves into the republic on Dec. 2. Several months later, the Mexican government severely restricted Anglo immigration and banned the introduction of slaves into the republic.

Undeterred, the Anglos succeeded in negotiating a new treaty with Mexico in 1831, which included Article 34, which called for pursuit and reclamation of fugitive slaves. After considerable wrangling between the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and Senate, Article 34 was removed from the treaty.

Also, by 1831 it became apparent through debate within the Mexican Senate that the government’s welcoming of fugitive slaves was not completely altruistic. Some Mexican officials, fearful of U.S. military intervention, had begun to see it as wise to encourage the development of runaway slave colonies along the Northern border as a way to lessen the threat posed by the United States. As historian Rosalie Schwartz put it, many Mexican officials “reasoned, these fugitives, choosing between liberty under the Mexican government and bondage in the United States, would fight to protect their Mexican freedom more vigorously than any mercenaries.” As the interests of Mexican officials and U.S. abolitionists coincided during the early 1830s, a modest number of former slaves established themselves in Texas and fared well during the period.

What a difference a border made

In 1836, after the fall of the Alamo and its slave-owning or pro-slavery leaders such as William Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, Mexican forces were defeated and an independent Texas was eventually annexed by the United States. However, before the expulsion of Mexican forces from Texas, Brig. Gen. José Urrea evicted scores of illegally settled plantation owners, liberated slaves, and in many instances, granted them on-the-spot titles to the land they had worked.

Oddly enough, many Black people call for “forty acres and a mule”—a reference to Union General [William] Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 and General [Oliver] Howard’s Circular 13, which made some land available to former slaves. But what one never hears are references to Mexican General José Urrea and the land titles that he and his men granted to former Texas slaves following the defeat of the Alamo—a generation before the “Civil War.”

Even after the loss of Texas, Mexican officials refused to formally acknowledge Texas independence on the grounds that it “would be equivalent to the sanction and recognition of slavery.” After Texas independence, the slave population mushroomed and the number of runaways across the South Texas-North Mexico border increased. In 1842, Mexico’s Constitutional Congress reasserted the nation’s commitment to fugitive slaves. In 1847, 38,753 slaves and 102,961 whites were listed in the first official Texas census. In 1850, in a new treaty accord with the United States, Mexico again refused to provide for the return of fugitive slaves.

The slave institution in Texas was continuously undermined by defiant Tejanos (Mexicans in Texas), who took great risks and invested enormous resources toward facilitating the escape of enslaved Africans. The Texas-to-Mexico routes to freedom constituted major unacknowledged extensions of the “Underground Railroad.” Tejanos were variously accused of “tampering with slave property,” “consorting with Blacks” and stirring up among the slave population “a spirit of insubordination.”

Plantation owners in Central Texas adopted various resolutions aimed at preventing Mexicans from aiding the slave population. Whites in Guadalupe County prohibited Mexican “peons” from entering the county and anyone from conducting business or interacting with enslaved persons without authorization from the owners. Bexar County whites suggested, “Mexican strangers entering from San Antonio register at the mayor’s office and give an account of themselves and their business.”

Delegates to a convention in Gonzales resolved that “counties should organize vigilance committees to prosecute persons tampering with slaves,” and that all citizens and slaveholders were to endeavor to prevent Mexicans from communicating with Blacks. Whites in Austin decreed that “all transient Mexicans should be warned to leave within ten days, that all remaining should be forcibly expelled unless their good character and good behavior were substantiated by responsible American citizens” and that “Mexicans should no longer be employed and their presence in the area should be discouraged.”

In Matagorda County, all Mexicans were driven out under the bogus claim that they were wandering, indigent sub-humans who, “have no fixed domicile, but hang around the plantations, taking the likeliest Negro girls for wives. ... They often steal horses, and these girls too, and endeavor to run them to Mexico.”

By the year 1855, the estimates were that as many as 4,000 to 5,000 formerly enslaved Africans had escaped to Mexico. Slaveholders became so alarmed at this trend, that they requested and received, approximately one-fifth of the standing U.S. army, which was deployed along the Texas-Mexico border in a vain effort to stem the flow of runaways.

Defiant Mexicans stood their ground, refused to return runaways, continued supporting slave uprisings and providing assistance to escaping slaves. In the words of Felix Haywood, a Texas slave whose experience is recalled in “The Slave Narratives of Texas,” “Sometimes someone would come along and try to get us to run up north and be free. We used to laugh at that. There was no reason to run up north. All we had to do was walk, but walk south and we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande.”

1857 was a year whose profound irony made it one of the most interesting. It was the year that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott, an enslaved African who had sued for his freedom on the grounds that his owner had forfeited any claim to him after taking him into a free state. Ironically, 1857 was the same year that the Mexican Congress adopted Article 13 declaring that an enslaved person was free the moment he set foot on Mexican soil.

Mexico provides jobs for African Americans

During the 1890s, hundreds of Black migrants, fed up with slave-like conditions and segregation, left Alabama for Mexico and established ten large colonies. Shortly thereafter, during the period of the Mexican Revolution, large numbers of Black people migrated from New Orleans to Tampico, Mexico, as the oil industry prospered. These Africans in Mexico established branches of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.

One of the Black oil workers who came to Tampico stated, “There is no race prejudice, everyone is treated according to his abilities.” During the same period, Black heavyweight-boxing champion Jack Johnson asserted that Mexico was “willing not only to give us the privileges of Mexican citizenship, but was also willing to champion our cause.”

Juan Uribe, a major Mexican official visiting Los Angeles in 1919, was quoted as saying, “My only regret is that it is not physically possible to immediately transport several million African Americans to my beloved Mexico, where the north yields her riches as nowhere else and where people are not disturbed by artificial standards of race or color.”

Similarly, African American immigrant Theodore Troy said, “I am going to a land where freedom and opportunity beckon me as well as every other man, woman and child of dark skin. In this land there are no Jim Crow laws to fetter me; I am not denied opportunity because of the color of my skin and wonderful undeveloped resources of a country smiled upon by God beckon my genius on to their development.”

A Black colony, which included 50 families, developed fruit orchards and engaged in cattle raising. It established itself in Baja, California, in the Santa Clara and Vallecitos Valleys situated between Ensenada and Tecate, approximately 30 miles south of San Diego and lasted into the 1960s.

Not to be overlooked is the enormous success of the Negro Baseball Leagues in Mexico during the 1930s and 1940s. Black ball players, together with 400 to 500 family members seeking relief from racism in the U.S. and segregated institutions, were hosted in Mexico by generally respectful competitors and admiring fans. One competitor in particular, Ray Dandridge, played for 18 years in Mexico, before Jackie Robinson gained admission into U.S. major league baseball.

Also, from the 1930s to the 1960s major Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco invited prominent African American artists such as Hale Woodruff, John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White to the Mexican Art School where they developed an art style which helped them to connect images more effectively to ethnic and class struggle.

Of course, there are many more historical intersections where Mexican and African people cooperated with each other. A few examples were the solidarity between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)/Black Panther Party and Brown Berets; SNCC and the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres and El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Atzlan (MEChA) and the Black Student Union (BSU).

Mack Lyons, a Black member of the United Farmworkers Union’s National Executive, negotiated its contract with Coca Cola, which owns Minutemaid and sizeable Florida orange groves. In Los Angeles during the 1990s, Black and brown students recognizing common history and mutual interests formed African and Latino Youth Summit (ALYS).

Admittedly, Vicente Fox is no Vicente Guerrero. The Mexico of today is profoundly different from the refuge that once welcomed fugitive slaves, or the land of opportunity that embraced African American job-seekers. Yet its beautiful history of support for African Americans in need of allies cannot be erased. It might prove useful to see the relationship between Black and brown people as similar to the bond between a man and woman. It is beautiful most of the time, but there are moments when it is tested and may become strained. When this happens one or both must give more and work to increase or renew trust.

Visit www.politicart.net for more information. Ron Wilkins can be contacted at rwilkins@csudh.edu.

Articles may be reprinted with credit to Socialism and Liberation magazine.

Reprinted from the Socialism and Liberation Magazine Web Site

www.socialismandliberation.org/mag

It's going to be a not-so-quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

On Friday, the movie "A Prairie Home Companion" is set to open in theaters nationwide. Based on Garrison Keillor's long-running public-radio show, it's a rather unorthodox story that mixes fictionalized characters with the actual radio personalities.

What's getting the film notice outside the art-house crowd is its stellar credentials. It's directed by the acclaimed Robert Altman and features such Oscar-worthy actors as Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Tommy Lee Jones.

But how is it going to play with the general public? Will the average moviegoer "get" it? Or will people even want to see it if they're not already familiar with the radio show?

As a devoted fan of "A Prairie Home Companion," I'm not sure what to make of all this. I feel like someone whose favorite restaurant gets reviewed by The New York Times and suddenly all these out-of-towners are showing up at what was previously "my" place.

I'm also worried that seeing the movie will forever change how I feel about the radio show, which has been a huge part of my life for more than 20 years. Whenever possible, I arrange my schedule so I can be near a radio between 6 and 8 p.m. Saturdays. And on those rare occasions when I have to miss the show, I catch the rebroadcast on Sunday afternoons.

It's just as good the second or even third time as when it comes over the airwaves live. I always listen with the keen appreciation that there is nothing else in the world like "A Prairie Home Companion," and that when Keillor, who's 63, dies or retires, he takes the magic with him.

I got hooked on the show while I was still in college. FM radio was in its infancy then, and the concept of a national network of public radio stations was just getting started. I was first attracted to public radio for the classical music, and later began listening to news programs such as "All Things Considered."

And then one Saturday evening, I heard a guy doing commercials for "Powdermilk Biscuits," which, he said, "give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. Made from whole wheat raised by Norwegian bachelor farmers, so you know they're not only good for you, they're also pure, mostly. Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!"

Back then, Garrison Keillor was much less polished than he is today. He dressed like a hayseed and had a distinctly Midwestern twang to his voice. His show was sponsored by agricultural companies like Cargill.

But it wasn't a Minnesota version of the Grand Ole Opry. In between the folk and bluegrass tunes were slices of imaginative, satirical humor that I found irresistible. My family was German Lutheran, so when Keillor poked gentle fun at emotional reserve of "my people," I could always laugh with recognition.

Though it was humor that first drew me to the show, I soon became intrigued by its eclectic music. I grew up listening mostly to my dad's classical albums and whatever was playing on Top 40 radio. PHC introduced me to a vast array of genres, including zydeco, klezmer, Celtic, gospel, even opera.

And I became a fan of so many amazing artists whom I might not otherwise have encountered, including Chet Atkins, Greg Brown, Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, Alison Krauss, Peter Ostroushko and countless others.

As PHC gained in popularity and listenership, Keillor began taking the show on tour. I was lucky enough to be living in Memphis, a city he was fond of because of its rich musical history.

So I was able to see the live show three times in Beale Street's Orpheum Theatre, a restored movie palace similar to the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. And on one of those occasions, I attended as a journalist and was allowed a backstage look into how the show is put together.

In the Central Time Zone, the show goes live at 5 p.m. About three hours earlier, the cast and musicians gather for a rehearsal, reading from a script that's written mostly by Keillor under pseudonyms such as "Emmanuel Transmission."

In the early days of PHC, the musicians often doubled as actors for the comedy skits. But as the show evolved, professional actors Tim Russell and Sue Scott were hired to contribute their talents to weekly set pieces such as "the adventures of Guy Noir, private eye" and fake commercials for the "Ketchup Advisory Board."

Russell and Scott are extraordinarily gifted, capable of mastering virtually any voice or accent. What you can't tell from listening on the radio is that they're acting out the characters with their body language as they read their lines.

In an era where disc jockeys can cue noises by pressing buttons on their computer, a sound-effects man may seem like an anachronism. But one of the most engaging aspects of a live PHC performance is to watch all the sounds being produced by one person on stage.

For many years, Tom Keith fulfilled that role, and still does when the show broadcasts from St. Paul. But now he prefers not to travel outside his home state of Minnesota. So when the show is on tour, Georgia native Fred Newman takes on those duties.

Their styles differ a bit. Keith tends to use common objects to produce sounds, whereas Newman relies more on making noises with his mouth.

But in either case, the challenge is to get the timing right. The radio listener hears the sound of footsteps, the creak of a door opening, then an actor speaking a line. But the theatre audience sees Keith or Newman moving frantically from one gadget to another, making sure the sounds come in smooth sequence so the flow of the story isn't disrupted.

There are dramatic musical effects as well, provided by Rich Dworsky, keyboardist and director of PHC's house ensemble, the Guy's All-Star Shoe Band.

At a certain point in every show, generally about halfway through the second hour, the actors and musicians exit the stage, with only Keillor remaining. The lights dim, and the audience cheers: It's time for the heart of PHC, the "news from Lake Wobegon."

No matter how many times I hear or witness it, I'm always filled with awe when Keillor spins tales about "the little town that time forgot, that the decades cannot improve." He doesn't work from a script or even a few handwritten notes. His eyes are closed during most of the segment, which generally lasts about 15 to 20 minutes.

Keillor says he does write an outline before the show, but once he starts telling the story, it often veers off in a direction he hadn't planned. It takes on a life of its own.

After talking about the residents of Lake Wobegon for more than 30 years, they're as real to Keillor as any living, breathing human being. He doesn't have to put a great deal of thought into it because he knows just what each one would say or do in a given situation.

In contrast to Southern novelists, whose characters tend to be freakish and melodramatic, Keillor's are appealing because they're so darned ordinary. Their lives revolve around tasks like planting tomatoes and shoveling snow.

But in a town where the citizens try to be quiet and unobtrusive, things never turn out quite as people expect.

This leads to memorable episodes that any longtime PHC fan will recall with relish: The Lutheran pastors on a sinking pontoon boat. The old man who accidentally left his wife at a truck stop. The giant wooden duck decoy. The wedding reception ruined by "Bruno the fishing dog."

To the uninitiated, those scenarios may not seem particularly hilarious. But the humor gradually escalates as Keillor's soothing baritone carries you along, helping you to appreciate life's glorious absurdities.

PHC is a throwback to a time, more than 50 years ago now, when radio was the primary source of entertainment for most Americans. I worry that when PHC is gone, I'll never again be able to experience the magic of radio. I'll never sit in my car transfixed for 20 minutes, unable to move until I hear how things turned out last week in Lake Wobegon.

Oh, I'm sure someone will try to carry on the tradition (as was done when Keillor temporarily ended PHC in 1987). But so much of what makes PHC special is Keillor himself. Some critics have called him a "modern-day Mark Twain," and I think it's a valid comparison.

In the age of the Internet, there's never going to be anyone else like Keillor. He's literate enough to speak in perfectly constructed sentences and recite huge chunks of poetry from memory, but he's also enough of a showman to act in comedy sketches and sing a pretty fine gospel tune.

His show couldn't exist anywhere other than public radio, because it's really not intended for mass consumption. PHC draws about 4 million listeners each week on 580 public radio stations. But even after three decades on the air, the average American has probably never heard of the show.

That's why I'm approaching the movie version with some trepidation. If this film is the first and only impression of "A Prairie Home Companion" that most people have, what will they come away with? Will the spirit of the radio show translate to the big screen?

But then I tell myself, What difference does it make what other people think? PHC has given me almost a quarter-century of good memories, and nothing can take that away from me.

So I'll go see the movie. Maybe I'll love it, maybe I won't. But I'll keep on tuning in to the radio show every Saturday night, for as long as it lasts.