There's plenty of good radio out there but you have to swing low on your dial to get to it; find an NPR station and listen for an hour...that's good stuff. We heard an All Things Considered poem about fishing on the drive north that really captured the beauty of public broadcasting - Fishing, An Epic by Kevin Kling. Check it out and I promise you won't regret it.

We find ourselves, on occasion, scanning Saturday morning radio stations on our way to vacation. If we have our druthers we try to turn in to the Tappet Brothers, Click and Clack, for better entertainment than we can ever get from any others. Their show is Car Talk and last week's episode was a gem, we laughed out loud in the car along with them. Tune it in and learn about your car, car repair, or how to get the dog smell out of the third-row seat of a 1997 Honda Odyssey.

Last night we watched (yes, on TV) the 30th Anniversary broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion. Usually we hear APHC in one car or another headed east or west or north or south and it is generally the welcoming voice of Garrison Keillor that reminds us that it's Saturday night from 6 until 8. There's something unquantifiably soothing about the show, more than Pat Donohue's expert guitar, Tom Keith's awesome sound effects, or even the softness of Mr. Keillor's voice. What gets me is not the content so much - I laugh louder at and am more excited by other outlets - as the media itself. It's radio that is soothing, just the clear sound of a voice coming from nowhere and channeling your attention with something that has to be engaging or you won't listen for long. Radio is about stories and music and subtle comedy that makes you think (or at the least recall the vast experience of your life up to that very moment and all of what you perceive will happen after that moment) and by the end of The News from Lake Wobegon you can help but love it. Last night Garrison Keillor, speaking as the boss and leader as I've never heard before, talked about how to last 30 years: don't have meetings, don't try new ideas but instead use old ones that people loved and have forgotten, hire people smarter than you, and be sure to appeal to shut-ins and people who are related but don't want to interact with each other. That's sound advice for a radio show or a blog, in my opinion. I've only been around for 25 years of APHC but its continuity is something remarkable, albeit somewhat overlooked because I'm not thinking about the next 30 years I'm thinking about the next Saturday night with Garrison Keillor singing Tishomingo Blues and introducing "a live broadcast of A Priarie Home Companion coming to you from the Fitzgerald Theater here in beautiful downtown Saint Paul."