And the winner is...ME!

It's true. While many of you were sleeping, I was winning a contest.

Author and blogger Frances Garrood, who lives in Wiltshire in the U.K., said yesterday she was "offering a small mystery prize for the best limerick on the subject of...writing limericks." Something snapped in my brain. Resolving to keep it clean, I tossed one off and submitted it:

A blogger whose real name is Bobby
Said, "Limerick writing's my hobby.
I don't know which is worse,
The smell of my verse
Or the people queued up in the lobby."

Frances loved it, so I submitted another one:

A limerick writer, Nan Tucket,
Put all of her works in a bucket.
But next to George Harrison
Hers paled in comparison;
'Twould be rude to divulge where she stuck it.

Frances said, "Even better! You're on a roll today, aren't you?"

I said, "I'm trying, Frances, I'm trying!" and Frances said, "Well, keep on, RWP. I'm enjoying them."

Whereupon she promptly retired for the night.

Not me. Four time zones to the west, I kept writing:

Though writing a limerick is easy,
Especially the type that are sleazy,
It's hard to refrain
From becoming profane
And a struggle to keep one's tone breezy.

...and writing:

The problem, dear reader, is textual.
Whether to be intellectual
And be thought a prude
Or succumb to the lewd
And write something thoroughly sexual.

...and writing:

A contest with limericks? Curses!
Composing those damnable verses
Fried my brain to a crisp,
"Call a doctor," I whisp-
ered, "and two psychiatric ward nurses."

...and then I went to bed too.

Today I awoke to discover that I had been named winner of the contest. Frances did not single out a particular limerick. I think I overwhelmed her with sheer volume.

I am retiring undefeated as the champion of writing clean limericks about writing limericks. And I am keeping an eye out (it's only an expression) for that small mystery prize.

P.S. - I hasten to add that limerick writing is not my hobby at all. I just said that in the first limerick because I needed something to rhyme with "Bobby". But the real champion appears to be Garrison Keillor of National Public Radio fame. Watch the last few minutes of his final News From Lake Wobegon (17:22) from last July's final Prairie Home Companion show with him as host.

Mrs. Sundberg makes a lot of sense

[Editor’s note. Blogger’s Overview page tells me that this is my 1200th post. Blogger’s Posts page, however, tells me that this is my 1199th post. Both cannot be true, and perhaps neither is true. In this uncertain world in which we live, one cannot know for sure whether to celebrate or keep plodding on. Some do both. Some do neither. It has been ever thus. --RWP]

I have been a fan of Garrison Keillor for a long, long time -- years and years and years -- and there’s not much about his Saturday evening radio program that I don’t like except hearing him try to harmonize with his guests who are singers. I can do without that. I like the “Guy Noir, Private Eye” skits and the “The Lives of the Cowboys” skits and the “News from Lake Wobegon” segment. I like the sound effects guy and some of Garrison’s occasional guests like Paula Poundstone (whom, if you don’t know, you should) and Meryl Streep (whom, if you don’t know, you must have been living on another planet for the past several decades). I could go on and on, but I won’t, unless I already did. I don’t know why Garrison Keillor came to mind because I haven’t listened to his program much lately. The only time I ever listen to the radio any more is when I’m in the car and I haven’t happened to have been in the car on Saturdays from 6pm until 8pm Eastern Daylight time in quite a while. I do have a clock-radio on the table beside my bed, but the only time I use it is to set the alarm on Saturday night for Sunday morning so I won’t be late for church. And I sure wouldn’t go sit in our bedroom just to listen to a radio program. That would be silly.

Anyway, I feed my A Prairie Home Companion addiction (that’s what the name of Garrison Keillor’s program is, A Prairie Home Companion) via the show’s website on the computer. The website includes a few things that aren’t even on the radio program, like Russ Ringsak’s columns and Mrs. Sundberg’s. Russ Ringsak is real (he’s the driver of the big 18-wheeler that carries the program’s sets and equipment from city to city) but Mrs. Sundberg, a housewife from Minnesota, is fictional, a figment of Garrison Keillor’s imagination, created out of whole cloth. Her part of the website is called “The View from Mrs. Sundberg’s Window” which is nothing at all like “The View” on TV with Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Elizabeth Hasselbeck (née Filarski), and Sherri Shepherd. Thank God for small favors.

Anyway, Mrs. Sundberg always starts out the same way: “Listened to the show Saturday and it was not bad.” which I suppose is a little self-deprecating joke of Garrison’s to try to mask his enormous pride and then she launches into whatever is on her mind and usually ends with a recipe. I thought I would share a few of her columns with you and then, if you like, you can search through her archives for more on your own.

Here’s one called “Life is Meaningful Because It Stops” that includes Tolkien, Franz Kafka, and a recipe for Rhubarbecued Ribs and Hot ’n Spicy Tortilla Dip. Here’s one called “I'm not put off by the thought of my own funeral” and another one called “A Monumental Act” that tells about the time she buried her Grandma’s ashes in Wisconsin. Here’s one more called “An Exercise in Forgiveness” that probably we all could benefit from.

Anyway, Mrs. Sundberg, a fictional character, a housewife from Minnesota who is naive and provincial and dumb and smart and sweet all at the same time, is worth a look.

And if you find that you don't care for her, you can always read
Russ Ringsak.

Christmas: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

...and you wanna know something? It ain’t over. Not until January 6th, when it’s Epiphany.

Here is the funniest, saddest, most poignant, most hilarious radio skit I have ever run across. It’s “Family Christmas,” complete with scripted sound effects, from Garrison Keillor (one of America’s treasures) and friends on A Prairie Home Companion.

Unless this one is.

I just can’t decide.